Five global stories to watch as the US waits for midterm election results
There was a moment when America was at the very brink of destruction.
With a president in a rage, Congress unable to stop the president’s agenda and polls showing a majority of voters opposed to the administration’s policies and actions, everything was lost for America.
When finally everything seemed to have tipped to the Democrats to win back the House of Representatives for the third time in over 40 years, and then the Senate, that’s when it became clear that the US had come to the end of its rope.
While not a complete ‘victory’ for the Democrats as they may see it, perhaps it is a turning point in the US’ history as a country that is only now beginning to come to terms with the events of that day in late November 2001.
In that moment, the USA could have, could and should have taken a page from one of its closest allies and embraced a new way of thinking, one that would have avoided all of the confusion and chaos of the 2000 election.
But that’s not how our system of government works.
After the election, the Bush administration decided to make all federal funding of both federal government agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the EPA to help pay for the reconstruction of Hurricane Katrina to the states, rather than to the victims of the hurricane.
The Obama administration would have taken that same approach and have offered the same aid, but to the states.
In doing so, this could have helped to stop the bleeding and to avoid a repeat of the devastating hurricane in which over 3,000 people died, and over 1.5 million (nearly 4.5 million if you include Louisiana’s total population count of 3 million or nearly one out six of the country’s residents) were left homeless and had to be evacuated from the Louisiana coast over a period of two weeks.
If the federal government hadn’t stepped in, the result could have been catastrophic. Instead, the Bush administration saw an opportunity to make matters worse.
Perhaps the US has had a bit of a ‘learning curve’
