Recent Conservative Failures

Disdain for Government > Failures

Failing Hurricane Katrina Victims

The Federal Emergency Management Agency was a model of efficiency and effectiveness in the 1990s—until the conservatives took it over and made it a dumping ground for conservative cronies. Gulf Coast hurricane victims paid the price, even as conservative think tanks held up the crisis as an opportunity to further cripple government. read more »

Rotting Regulatory Standards

We don't trust highway patrolmen to pull themselves over and write themselves speeding tickets. But conservatives trust corporations to do just that—to regulate themselves. The result has been lead-tainted toys, foodstuffs poisoned by E. coli, and God-knows-what other messes for our children and grandchildren to inherit. read more »

Abandoning Walter Reed Patients

The conservatives' opportunism in turning over public functions to unaccountable corporations knows no bounds—as we saw when the upkeep of the crown jewel of our veterans' healthcare system was turned over to IAP Worldwide, a management company that let the place fall to an infestation of rats, mice, cockroaches and mold. read-more »

Quagmire in Iraq

It wasn't just bad strategic thinking that led to the mess in Iraq—it was the organized contempt of conservative ideologues for the expertise of State Department planners who planned the rebuilding of post-invasion Iraq, but were totally ignored. That failure proved the root of the anti-American insurgency that continues to rage. read more »

Free Market Fundamentalism > Failures

Quagmire in Iraq

Soldiers take an oath to uphold the Constitution, and are accountable to a uniform code of military justice. But by turning over more and more of the functions of soldiering over to private contractors like Blackwater, those codes of justice evaporate—making our defenses weaker and leaving our international reputation in tatters. read more »

Abandoning Patients at Walter Reed Army

The very nature of government contracts require government monitors. Which gives lie to the idea that market discipline alone forces contractors to do the best job. Instead, unwatched contractors can more easily can hide their incompetence—until, as at Walter Reed, the rat droppings become too plentiful to ignore. read more »

Rotting Regulatory Standards

The financial winners in a free market aren't necessarily the firms that deliver the best service. They're sometimes the firms that can do the best job of hiding incompetence from the customer—aided and abetted by the conservative obsession with eliminating the watchdogs. read more »

Miscast Morality > Faliures

Corporate Wilding

Family values are central to the conservative creed. But what weakens families more than a corporate raider hollowing out a factory for short-term financial gain, or stripping retirees of their pensions, or firing union activists struggling for better wages and working conditions? read more »

Rotting Regulatory Standards

Whenever conservatives slash a regulation or defend a governmental agency designed to protect the public, you can bet that greed is at the root. Conservatives call that "freedom"—but, as the philosopher Isaiah Berlin said, "freedom for the wolf is death to the lamb." Too many lambs are suffering under conservative mis-rule—and isn't that the real moral failure? read more »

Abandoning of Patients Walter Reed

A crucial component of conservative moralism is an ostentatious devotion to military valor. Conservatives tend to forget to honor the soldiers once they return stateside from war, however—and the scandalous rot at Walter Reed Army Medical Center is only the most dramatic example. read more»

Foreclosing of America

Ask a conservative, and she'll tell you the family is the basic building block of society. It's hard toWal disagree—but how can you keep a family together if you're in danger of losing your home? Subprime mortgages were set up to feed Wall Street's voracious appetite for innovative financial instruments. The fallout from that misbegotten greed is now tearing families apart. read more »

Security Racket > Failures

Quagmire in Iraq

Who benefits from the Iraq War? Certainly not the families sending off their brave sons and daughters to fight. Certainly not taxpayers footing the $12 billion monthly bill. But people like Bunker Hunt—a Bush crony rewarded with a lucrative oil franchise in Iraqi Kurdistan—will do just fine. Why not a national security strategy that works for the rest of us? read more »

Failing Hurricane Katrina Victims

The first instinct among conservative leaders when Hurricane Katrina made landfall was to reach for militaristic solutions: to lock down a traumatized city against a fearsome epidemic of violent crime that turned out to be more apparent than real. Already, Blackwater is hoping to build a new training center in Southern California to help further militarize disaster response. Great for the arms merchants and the mercenaries; not so great for everyone else.read more »

Abandoning of Patients Walter Reed

Today's military—recruited from America's most economically vulnerable populations—are honored the day they're sent off as cannon fodder for the neocons' foreign adventures, and treated as disposable Americans once they come home. Who cares, as long the important ideological points get made? read more »

Ends Justify the Means > Faliures

Quagmire in Iraq

For neoconservatives  the remaking the Middle East—with Iraq as the tip of the spear was—aimed to drill home an abstract ideological point: America must dominate the world and make tyrants tremble in our wake. The execution of this goal brought nothing but ruin in its wake—worth it, by their lights. Vice President Cheney still insists that "in the end," Iraq has been a success. read more »

Failing Hurricane Katrina Victims

Sickeningly enough, the conservative Heritage Foundation saw Hurricane Katrina as an ideological opportunity. Edwin Meese pulled together a blue-ribbon panel to exploit the storm and advance a slew of conservative panaceas—slashing taxes, incinerating regulations, and weakening the public schools. The ends—conservative ideology—more important than the pain conservatives knew they would inflict on the powerless. read more »

Cronyism > Failures

Quagmire in Iraq

When you turn over warmaking capacity to private companies looking to make a profit, there’s no wonder why the war drags on and on and on? read more »

Corporate Wilding

When you turn over regulatory authority to former corporate lobbyists, is there any wonder why corporations get away with swindling their stockholders and the public? read more »

Failing Hurricane Katrina Victims

When you hand over reconstruction work to your political friends via no-bid contracts, is it any wonder the work is (or isn't) done without accountability? read more »

Abandoning Walter Reed Patients

When management of the crown jewel of America's military health care system is turned over to a for-profit outfit, is it any surprise they tried to get away with cutting corners? read more »

Corporate Welfare > Failures  

Quagmire in Iraq

The special government favors that private contractors in Iraq—from Halliburton to Blackwater—enjoy, are like money in the bank to their stockholders—and a drain on the rest of our pocketbooks. read more »

Corporate Wilding

Sometimes it’s hard to figure out where corporate welfare ends and outright corporate malfeasance begins. When California privatized its power grid, it was both a gift to energy companies like Enron, and an open invitation to swindle the public. read more »

Failing Hurricane Katrina

Victims After the federal government set up special tax-advantaged "Gulf Opportunity Zones" to help Katrina victims who needed housing, is it any surprise that some of the money ended up with developers building luxury condos hundreds of miles from the storm? read more »   

Abandoning Walter Reed Patients

When conservatives privatize a government function like the management of Walter Reed, they always say it's to make the services better and more efficient. They never call it what it actually is—a giveaway straight from the public purse. read more »

Deregulation > Failures

Corporate Wilding

Trace back a corporate scandal to its root, and you often find a conservative legislator denouncing a regulation constraining that corporation as "burdensome." read more »

Rotting Regulatory Standards

Here's how shredding reasonable regulations because they are too burdensome to business often works out in the real world. read more »

Failing Hurricane Katrina Victims

In a climate where conservatives make it harder for government to keep track of malfeasance in the private sector, is it any wonder that developers were able to rake in cash meant to help hurricane victims for condos for the rich? read more »

Crumbling Infrastructure > Failures

Failing Hurricane Katrina Victims

"No one anticipated the breach of the levies," President Bush lied during Hurricane Katrina. In fact, because of failed policies by the Army Corps of Engineers, and the suspension of work to shore up the levies because of revenue shortfalls, the breach was predicted early and often. read more »

Rotting Regulatory Standards

It's easier for infrastructure to crumble all around us when you loosen the rules that demand it be kept in top shape. read more »

Pay-To-Play Politics > Failures

Quagmire in Iraq

When Bush crony Joseph Albaugh left FEMA to start a consulting company to held businesses drum up opportunities in war-torn Iraq, part of what he was selling was his government experience—his intimate knowledge about where to place the right contributions to get what you want. read more »

Failing Hurricane Katrina Victims

HUD secretary Alphonso Jackson admitted that he hands out contracts based on their loyalty to President Bush. And one way, of course, to show your loyalty to a politician is to raise money for them. read more »

Rotting Regulatory Standards

When removing one tiny line in a massive federal statute can mean millions more profit for your company, is it any wonder business tries to buy access? read more »