摘要：Working off a series of well-established scripts, the conservative think tanks were within days constructing a 'principled response' to Hurricane Katrina, predicated upon fiscal restraint and 'offsetting' budget cuts in Washington, DC, but extending into what amounts to an audacious neoliberal reconstruction agenda for the Crescent City. This includes an enlarged role for private enterprise in market-led development, governmental outsourcing, and city governance; selective institutional roll-backs, focused on the social state; redoubled crime control, making the city safe for tourists and gentrifiers; and an interventionist program of 'moral reconstruction', aimed at those stranded in the storm's wake. Yet if this is to be the fate of New Orleans, it was never a pre-ordained one. Katrina presented an urgent and challenging problem for the conservative think tanks, and they committed significant resources to the response. Recognizing the significance of the events on the Gulf, key players in the think tanks were back at their desks immediately after the storm, even while Bush Administration officials completed their vacations. While the conservative think tanks may have been relatively successful in 'reframing' Katrina, and supplying a package of workable policy rationales and ruses to the Bush Administration, their strenuous efforts also reveal the politically constructed--if not jerrybuilt--nature of this 'free-market' response. The character and content of their response, my focus in this essay, also speaks to fissures and fault lines within the neocon/neoliberal project itself. But, for now, let's see how the conservative intelligentsia told the story.
Loading...
