Katrina Disaster

[LadyJeanne]

Yes to the latter. I hope I'm not a prophet.

We are always prepared for the last disaster (or war) and not for the next one. I was thinking about FEMA and the UK equivalent preparing for a flood and being useless in an earthquake. Hence my slip replacing New Orleans by Los Angeles. I was thinking that San Francisco expects the big quake and Los Angeles doesn't.

Og

I wrote to our estimable Mayor Gavin Newsom to ask him to pay very, very close attention to what was happening in the South, because it's clear we're not going to get much help from the feds in the first week after 'The Big One'. And to be a really squeaky wheel with Governor Terminator and the White House about getting funds approved for earthquake retroffiting. I don't want Gavin and Arnold to be standing on Twin Peaks, surveying the rubble that used to be San Francisco, and saying things like, "This is a major tragedy and everybody died because the city is so hard to access, but We'll Be Back."

Course, Gavin hasn't replied yet...

 

[oggbashan]

Og made some excellent points concerning natural disasters, I would extend his thoughts by reminding all that the Tsunami in Asia that took so many lives, fell out of the news soon after and we still don't know the final death toll (although it can be searched) as a matter of public record and the so called 'news organizations' have very little information on expediture of disaster relief funds or the recovery and rebuilding of that entire area.

There be another storm brewing off Florida, path uncertain; hope it heads elsewhere...


amicus...

The Tsunami is not dead news in the UK. We still have programmes about the impact and the relief effort. When Katrina struck we had comparisons made with the Tsunami and updates on what has happened in the various countries affected.

We have had a programme recently about the international team of doctors who are still working to identify the bodies still being evaluated.

Banda Aceh is still mentioned, particularly the agreement between the rebels and Indonesia's government. There is a faint hope that the fighting there has stopped and such locals as are left can live more normal lives.

Locally, one of our small charitable organisations has paid for a fishing boat for a family in Sri Lanka. Now they are raising money for another.

Og

 

[Extreme Bohunk]

Katrina Victims to Get $2K Debit Cards

WASHINGTON - The federal government plans to begin doling out debit cards worth $2,000 each to adult victims of Hurricane Katrina, The Associated Press has learned.

Homeland Security Department Secretary Michael Chertoff descibed the plan in a conference call with state officials Wednesday morning. The unprecedented cash card program initially will benefit stranded people who have been moved to major rescue centers such as the Houston Astrodome.

"They are going to start issuing debit cards, $2,000 per adult, today at the Astrodome," said Kathy Walt, a spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

The cards could be used to buy food, transportation, gas and other essentials the displaced people need, according to a state official who was on the call and requested anonymity because the program has not been publicly announced.

 

[rgraham666]

If you MUST disrupt the thread with personal attacks, youmight at least consider consulting a dictionary of political terms and get the insults at least on the same side of the political spectrum.

Calling Amicus a communist is on a par with calling Stalin a humanitarian.

But Harold, our friend agrees with Marx on how a capitalist system must work.

To quote the writer that first pointed this fact out to me.

Marxism is primarily an analysis of how society works - or rather how it must work. This dialectic is based on the struggle of the classes and the battle of the unregulated market-place in which the strongest win. It is a market-place which cannot be tempered, according to Marx. It must and will run free and so function as a battleground between those who have power and those who don't. The market-place will seek to maximize profits even if this is to the disadvantage of most. Profits and power are the truth of the economic struggle and economic determinism will decide the social structure.

So far as I can tell, our 'friend' believes what I've quoted above.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

In case you missed it, Jon's Back!


The Daily Show

Jon Stewart & Ed Helms discuss presidential response to Hurricane Katrina.


Then, take at one CNN Interview.

At the moment it is under Developing Story

Entitled: Duke students beat feds in aiding stranded victims

 

[Weird Harold]

was that 32 teams for the entire huricane area or for NO, I assume for the entire huricane area, which is the size of the UK. 32 teams in an area that size, even assuming they were full teams, is a small drop in the bucket.

From the article Sophia Jane posted:
We already had all of our first-responder teams pre-deployed -- 32 teams in all -- who went in and staged in and around the hurricane zone and were ready to go by Sunday. This is deployment that requires that the governor make a request to the federal government," Rule said.

Note that whether 32 team is a drop in the bucket or not, that was everything DHS/FEMA had to send atthat point in time and that they are not organized or intended to take control of a a situation; they are organized and intended to assist wherever local authorities need asistance -- which means that they have to wait for local authorities to tell them where they're needed.

Also from the article:
He added that Alabama and Mississippi did a much better job of responding quickly than Louisiana. Alabama and Mississippi have Republican governors.

Just exactly what does the poltical affiliation of Alabama and Missisippi's governers have to do with the simple fact that the response is not as screwed up in the areas under their jurisdiction as it is in Lousiana. I notice the article didn't actually quote Sen DeLay and I doubt that HE made the connection that is implied -- he might have, but I doubt it; if he had the author would have continued the direct quote.

Should DHS/FMA have had more than 32 first-response teams? Maybe. Hind-sight says they could certainly have used more, but how often would more be needed?

I have no idea what kind of factors weighed into the determination that 32 teams were what the number needed. The statistical chance of a storm like Katrina occuring within a certain time frame certainly was part of the decision, and disaster preparedness is largely betting on the odds that the preparations will be used.

No disaster preparedness plan ever is designed to handle a "doomsday" scenario with more than a "bend over and kiss your ass goodbye" because the necessary preparations for doomsday statistically are very unlikely to be used in any given planning/funding period or adequate preparations are simply too expensive to justify on a "someday we'll need this much capacity" prediction.

Whatever the reasons for only having 32 teams were, that is the number available for a first-response and ALL of them were mobilized and pre-positioned. AND those pre-positioned for Mississippi and Alabama were used -- whether the people responsible for using them were aliens or zoroastrians or whatever.

Why weren't they used in Louisiana?

Gov. Blanco is almost a blonde; could that be the reason? I doubt it.

Her pictures don't make her look short, so it's probably not some Napoleanic complex although some of the decision made in Louisiana might suggest that.

I seriously doubt that Gov blanco's political affiliation is any more relevant to the decisions she made than the color of her hair or her stature -- and it's not a sure thing that she is responsible for the obstructionism of the "Louisiana authorities" that seem to be cited in in all of the annecdotal stories of individual federal or NGO assets not being used.

The question that needs to be answered though is why are federal and NGO relief assets being used in a timely manner in Mississippi and Alabama and not in Louisiana.

 

[LadyJeanne]

Then, take at one CNN Interview.

At the moment it is under Developing Story

Entitled: Duke students beat feds in aiding stranded victims

VB, I found a more complete story on this. Once again, I'm sickened that so much of New Orleans, and apparently Alabama and Mississippi, was so easily accessible and our emergency management people just wrung their hands about how difficult it was to get there. I honestly believed during the first couple of days that all the roads must have been out and there really was no way. That is, until I saw Harry Connick Jr. walking on Bourbon St.


3 Duke students tell of 'disgraceful' scene

By Ray Gronberg : The Herald-Sun
gronberg@heraldsun.com
Sep 4, 2005 : 9:36 pm ET

DURHAM -- A trio of Duke University sophomores say they drove to New Orleans late last week, posed as journalists to slip inside the hurricane-soaked city twice, and evacuated seven people who weren't receiving help from authorities.

The group, led by South Carolina native Sonny Byrd, say they also managed to drive all the way to the New Orleans Convention Center, where they encountered scenes early Saturday evening that they say were disgraceful.

"We found it absolutely incredible that the authorities had no way to get there for four or five days, that they didn't go in and help these people, and we made it in a two-wheel-drive Hyundai," said Hans Buder, who made the trip with his roommate Byrd and another student, David Hankla.

Buder's account -- told by cell phone Sunday evening as the trio neared Montgomery, Ala., on their way home -- chronicled a three-day odyssey that began when the students, angered by the news reports they were seeing on CNN, loaded up their car with bottled water and headed for the Gulf coast to see if they could lend a hand.

The trio say they left Durham about 6 p.m. Thursday and reached Montgomery about 12 hours later. After catching 1½ hours of sleep, they reached the coast at Mobile. From there, they traveled through the Mississippi cities of Biloxi and Gulfport.

They say they elected to keep going because it seemed like Mississippi authorities had things well in hand.

Pushing on, they passed through Slidell, La., and tried to get into New Orleans by a couple of routes. Each time, police and National Guard troops turned them away. By 2 p.m. they'd wound up in Baton Rouge.

full story

 

[amicus]

LadyJeanne...

I am sure you will believe what you want to, so perhaps this is another wasted effort at enlightenment.

I have lived both in Biloxi and Gulfport. The beach highway connecting those cities and several others west of Gulfport have been totally impassable since the storm struck.

I 10, the interstate freeway from Mobile to New Orleans, which I have traveled many times was closed in Mobile during and after the storm.

From television news videos, many portions of the interstate were totally destroyed to the east of New Orleans.

Since many news crews did get into the city of New Orleans early on, it is evident that there were avenues of access.

If you have read these threads, you will have learned that both FEMA and National Guard Units were placed in readiness but had no authority to proceed on their own.

That authority is properly vested in city and state government agencies.

I think few are heartless enough to have watched those poor, suffering people at the Dome or the Convention Center or on the overpasses, be left for days with no assistance and not feel concern and anguish, I know I did.

If you feel you have to place blame and get your pound of flesh from someone, then do so.

But being accurate would also be good.


amicus...


Oh, I think it was Boxlicker who addressed gasoline prices...one analyst on a news program offered that there was no 'price gouging' that the market was operating on a supply and demand basis, diverting product from an area of less demand to an area of greater demand.

In other words, the market functioned as it was intended to.

I like a cantelope, now and then, but prices in winter time are higher than I am willing to pay. Thus, I do not expend resources on that commodity.

Not that many on this forum are the least bit interested in market economics; most seem to think that the exchange of goods and services should be regulated by government with supplies and prices set by that government.

We have seen how well that worked in the former Soviet Union, but people never seem to stop yearning for an utopian world...sighs...


amicus...

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I don't want to get back into this, but I did want to post this as something being passed around among folks here in Jackson. It won't please most of you, but it is indicative of the way many people feel down here. It is, in extreme contrast to what you will be seeing on the television and in the media, but it's an opinion that is out there.

I would hope no one will slam me. I'm not expousing the view or endorseing it. Merely pointing out that the view in vogue here, that the Fed failed, isn't the only view of the disaster.











An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the
Welfare State
by Robert Tracinski



It took four long days for state and federal officials to figure out
how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because
it also took me four long days to figure out what was going on there. The
reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are
confronting a natural disaster.

If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials
is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation
to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop
the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists,
natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary
people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of
doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up
and rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to
do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they
are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists-myself
included-did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding,
but about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by
federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane
Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television
channel has gotten the story wrong.

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not
happen over four days last week. It happened over the past four
decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

The man-made disaster is the welfare state.

For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be
confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave
in an emergency-indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in
other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have
been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it
is not even what we expect from a Third World country.

When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion.
They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously
organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in
America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own
initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care
of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town
whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get
out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars
through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of
New Yorkers to September 11).

So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?

To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a
description from a Washington Times story:

"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists,
knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets;
and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.

"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen
poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....

"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened
Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with
shoot-to-kill orders.

" 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,'
she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These
troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if
necessary and I expect they will.' "

The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article
shows a SWAT team with rifles and armored vests riding on an armored
vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid,
listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks
exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.

What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for
an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to
storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the
drivers to speed away, frightened for their lives? What causes people
to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Superdome?

Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further
destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help
them?

My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a
sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage one night on Fox News
Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She
studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is
located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert
Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in
America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for
uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since,
mercifully, been demolished.)

What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a
whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"-the
informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news
channels-gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the
residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane,
and of those who remained, a large number were from the city's public
housing projects. Jack Wakeland then told me that early reports from
CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the
prisoners in the city's jails-so they just let many of them loose.
[Update: I have been searching for news reports on this last story, but
I have not been able to confirm it. Instead, I have found numerous
reports about the collapse of the corrupt and incompetent New Orleans
Police Department; see here and here.]

There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two
populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to
live in the housing projects, and vice versa.

There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the
deluge hit-but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from
two groups: criminals-and wards of the welfare state, people selected,
over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced
helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep-on whom the
incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.

All of this is related, incidentally, to the incompetence of the city
government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city,
despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. In a city corrupted
by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow
of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political
supporters-not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.

No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact,
some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for
example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans
had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an
execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious
Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the
truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was
the exact opposite of individualism.

What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of
the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is
behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the
responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond
to
a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to
overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain
that the government hasn't taken care of them. And they don't use the
chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.

But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about
saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own
anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their
businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried
about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But
living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.

People living in piles of their own trash, while petulantly complaining
that other people aren't doing enough to take care of them and then
shooting at those who come to rescue them-this is not just a
description of the chaos at the Superdome. It is a perfect summary of the 40-year
history of the welfare state and its public housing projects.

The welfare state-and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains
and encourages-is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness
that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is
reporting.

Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005

 

[Weird Harold]

They say they elected to keep going because it seemed like Mississippi authorities had things well in hand.

Pushing on, they passed through Slidell, La., and tried to get into New Orleans by a couple of routes. Each time, police and National Guard troops turned them away. By 2 p.m. they'd wound up in Baton Rouge.

full story

and later from later inthe full article:
They were stopped again by authorities at the edge of New Orleans, but this time were able to make it through.

"We waved the press pass, and they looked at each other, the two guards, and waved us on in," Buder said.

An interesting saga that may answer one poignant question asked by a reporter -- "we can get in here, why can't relief?" -- and again highlights that the problems are in Louisiana.

Apparently the answer to the poignant question is, "relief workers can't get into New Orleans because they don't have press passes!"

Also note that it was "police and national guard troops," NOT federal authorities, who are keeping people out of New Orleans. (last I checked, I couldn't find anything about Gov Blanco releasing her LA Guard units to DHS control but I did find a reference to Mayor Nagin giving orders to "Police and Guard units in New Orleans.")

 

[LadyJeanne]

If you feel you have to place blame and get your pound of flesh from someone, then do so.

But being accurate would also be good.

I consider the Mayor and the Governor just as responsible for this mess as I do FEMA, DHS, and GWB. They fucked up. All of them, on different scales and in different ways. What I will not do is hold the Mayor and the Governor solely responsible, which is what you seem to want to do, completely absolving FEMA, DHS, and GWB. No, I did not expect GWB to personally review evacuation plans for New Orleans. I would have expected that we'd have enough money for the Army Corp of Engineers to shore up the levees properly, and I hold him accountable for spending untold billions on rebuilding Iraq instead. I hold him responsible for gutting FEMA. And I hold him responsible for putting people in charge of emergency planning and management who have never managed even a rained out Little League game.

Oh, I think it was Boxlicker who addressed gasoline prices...one analyst on a news program offered that there was no 'price gouging' that the market was operating on a supply and demand basis, diverting product from an area of less demand to an area of greater demand.

In other words, the market functioned as it was intended to.

I like a cantelope, now and then, but prices in winter time are higher than I am willing to pay. Thus, I do not expend resources on that commodity.

Not that many on this forum are the least bit interested in market economics; most seem to think that the exchange of goods and services should be regulated by government with supplies and prices set by that government.

What I don't expect is gas prices in California to rise since our supply is not in the least affected by production in the Gulf. And I have seen prices rise here. That is not supply/demand - that is price gouging.

 

[amicus]

Thanks, Colly, for the article...

Several buzzwords in the piece reminded me of Ayn Rand and the Objectivists who were and are fond of the phrase, "welfare state" and it does perhaps apply in part not only to New Orleans, but many urban areas with government housing projects, high crime and drug use areas and high unemployment.

I understand your reluctance...one can seldom dare to point out that New Orleans is 67 percent a black population. And further that in many jails, state and federal prisons, the population is overwhelmingly black.

The standard answer from the left is that it is white america's own created problem due to slavery and unequal rights, racism, bias and prejudice.

I heard reported somewhere that 30 percent of the black population of New Orleans were unemployed and on the welfare roles before the storm.

Quite like you said, I espouse no firm stance on the race issue, mainly because I see no solutions to it.

Again, I appreciate the opportunity to read the article...thankx...


amicus...

 

[LadyJeanne]

Colly, is that article really saying that prisoners were released into the streets of New Orleans?

I had heard that 6,000 prisoners had been evacuated from the prisons. I also heard an interview with the Mayor - he said there were normally a lot of drugs flowing through NO, and it's likely that many of those drug users were now without their drugs, ie, jonesing for a fix, breaking into pharmacies for the drugs, and the senseless rapes, murders, and shooting.

The article is right on about the welfare state, though. I lived in the city of Chicago most of my life and when you cram a lot of poor into one place, the working poor and children do end up sharing close quarters with criminals and gangs. This encourages an environment of lawlessness - a virtual no-man's land. No good comes of this, which is why those housing projects are coming down in Chicago all over the city.

 

[Couture]

DeLay points to local officials
The House majority leader late Tuesday tried to deflect criticism of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina by saying "the emergency response system was set up to work from the bottom up," then announced a short time later that House hearings examining that response had been canceled.

The Posse Comitatus Act, 18 U.S.C. 1385,
federal troopsmay, however, render
humanitarian assistance, including the provision of
emergency medical care to civilians and the
destruction of explosives found in civilian
communities.

No offense to Rep Delay, but the Coast Guard was actively pulling people off of rooftops while FEMA was pussyfooting around. Expecting local officials to be able to guess what mystery items the feds have available is a far reach.

When we were hit by our own hurricane and flood, the coast guard and national guard were on the scene (Thank all you wonderful people) FEMA was there in full force. On the second day, there were helicopter shipments of goods to the various shelters. I have no idea how long it would have taken if the decision had been made to take the people to the food and water instead of delivering food and water to the people, however, I can say without a doubt, it would have been a fucking disaster and we had nowhere near the number of people that were hit by Katrina. It is much easier to airlift MREs and water than people.

However, we had a FEMA person with actual disaster relief experience. The current guy was fired from a Pony show. No wonder he is more about the appearance than the saving of lives.

 

[Weird Harold]

I don't want to get back into this, but I did want to post this as something being passed around among folks here in Jackson. It won't please most of you, but it is indicative of the way many people feel down here. It is, in extreme contrast to what you will be seeing on the television and in the media, but it's an opinion that is out there.

I would hope no one will slam me. I'm not expousing the view or endorsing it. Merely pointing out that the view in vogue here, that the Fed failed, isn't the only view of the disaster.


An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the
Welfare State
by Robert Tracinski

A good, well articulated article. I'm not sure that Mr.Tacinski is completely correct, but he certainly has some valid ponts that shouldn't be ignored.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Colly, is that article really saying that prisoners were released into the streets of New Orleans?

I had heard that 6,000 prisoners had been evacuated from the prisons. I also heard an interview with the Mayor - he said there were normally a lot of drugs flowing through NO, and it's likely that many of those drug users were now without their drugs, ie, jonesing for a fix, breaking into pharmacies for the drugs, and the senseless rapes, murders, and shooting.

The article is right on about the welfare state, though. I lived in the city of Chicago most of my life and when you cram a lot of poor into one place, the working poor and children do end up sharing close quarters with criminals and gangs. This encourages an environment of lawlessness - a virtual no-man's land. No good comes of this, which is why those housing projects are coming down in Chicago all over the city.

I haven't verified any of the articles claims. Which is rare for me. I usually approach anything with a healthy streak of skepticism. In this case though, I didn't try to evaluate the article. I just posted it because I know there aren't many here who will see it and even fewer who would post something that blunt.

Sometimes, in our myopia, we fail to realize there are views out there that don't even use our bedrock assumptions as points of reference, much less reach our conclusions. People who are so vocal in supporting their own conclusions, often express dismay when conclusions diametrically opposed to theirs are voiced. I think it's instructive to see how a conclusion could come about that disputes your own.

I hope people here can read it and get some grasp of the assumptions they take daily for granted. Assumptions that are not neccissarily the same assumptions other thinkers are working with.

For my part, I've thrown about 6 people on ignore for right now. Not because of them, but because I can't just let it go and right now, I see enough depressing stuff, day to day. I need lit to be fun for a while. So I posted this without comment beyond not assuming I endorse it because I posted it. I fully admit I haven't even applied my normal standards of trying to verify the facts invovled.

 

[Weird Harold]

I have no idea how long it would have taken if the decision had been made to take the people to the food and water instead of delivering food and water to the people, however, I can say without a doubt, it would have been a fucking disaster and we had nowhere near the number of people that were hit by Katrina. It is much easier to airlift MREs and water than people.

I've never claimed the decision in New Orleans to tak the people to the food and water wa a good decision, only that it was the decision that was made and it affected a lot of other decisions about when and where to send water and MREs.

In fact, I think who ever came up with the idea that allowing aid into the city would encourage people to stay there should wind up in jail as soon as possible. I do NOT think that was a federal decision or a policy DHS/FEMA agreed with either.

I think when the media gets around to comparing the response in Mississippi and Alabama with the response in Louisiana, I think there will be a lot of questions asked about the decision made in Louisiana and who made them.

 

[LadyJeanne]

I need lit to be fun for a while.

I think there are a few sex threads popping up here and there again.

 

[rgraham666]

All the welfare state's fault.

It is to laugh.

I worked for over twenty years and all I got for it was insanity.

Maybe I am a welfare bum. Don't like it much, but at least I'm alive.

If I lived in a world like the writer of that article wanted, I would at best be dribbling on myself under a bridge. If I hadn't died from exposure sometime over the last decade. Or knifed for my smokes. Or my brain pickled by cheap alcohol. Or burned to death because the campfire in my squat got out of control. Or any one of the thousands of ways the homeless die.

But hey, I'd deserve it. I'm weak after all. And only the strong are allowed any place in our society.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

So this guy's wife used to live in Chicago and what she heard on Fox News reminded her of the projects. Ergo, it's all welfare's fault.

Gimme a fucking break. Let's not point fingers unless we can point them atthe victims, right?

Now don't we all feel better? It turns out it was their own damned fault for being poor. They got what was coming to them.

Why don't we just confine our help to people who appreciate it? Like the Iraqis.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about
saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own
anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their
businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried
about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But
living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.

People living in piles of their own trash, while petulantly complaining
that other people aren't doing enough to take care of them and then
shooting at those who come to rescue them-this is not just a
description of the chaos at the Superdome. It is a perfect summary of the 40-year
history of the welfare state and its public housing projects.

Think this guy has a bit of an axe to grind? You think he knows that the majority of welfare recipients are single white mothers trying to feed their children? Think maybe there's a bit of racism in his argument?

What a crock of ignorant, vituperative, demagogic bullshit. It sounds like it was written by a member of the Klan.

 

[Couture]

When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion.
They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously
organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in
America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own
initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care
of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town
whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get
out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars
through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of
New Yorkers to September 11).Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005

Colly, the guy who wrote this is a senior writer for the Rand Institute. They are against any sort of welfare or socialism. This guy seems to equate 9/11 to Katrina, but that's not really a fair comparison.

As someone who has lived through a hurricane and flood I can tell you; there ain't a whole lot of organizing going on. There is no electricity. The roads are washed out. There is no phone service. There is an abundance of water, but you can't use it because it is contaminated.

Everyone affected, no matter our ecomomic status, become welfare citizens. We depend on other Americans to step up and help us out in times of trouble. That is what we all pay taxes for - insurance. So that we know that if the shit ever hits the fan, there is someone there to help us pick up the pieces.

We'll take over from there.

We all put money into the system. Maybe some of us never get a dollar for dollar return, but it is impossible to truly measure when you factor in education and safety.

Most importantly, can this guy look someone who's lost everything, has weathered a disaster, and is hungry or thirsty in the eye and not help? If he can, he is a different sort of person than I.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

The article is worse than that. The guy's blaming the victims for the disaster. He's equating a traffic light going out in a small town to the destruction of a major city. He's saying that everyone on aid is a criminal and a parasite. He's saying that they got what they deserved.

I just came back from watching the news, from seeing the pictures of kids who lost their parents, animals abandoned and dying, families who've lost everything they owned and have nothing. Nothing.

And then I come here and read this execrable racist crap.

Well you know what? It wasn't welfare recipients who neglected maintenance of the levees. It's not welfare recipients who are raising your taxes and taking more and more of your income to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

The rich blaming the poor is one of the oldest tricks there is, and people still buy it. They lap it up.

Shameful.

 

[shereads]

It's interesting that the writer of that piece assumes that the welfare state is to blame. I've been reading and hearing interviews with evacuees - black and poor - who have included a family where both parents worked, a college-bound teenaged girl with a partial scholarship, and a certified nurse's aid.

Are there still people who think they're politically and socially aware, who don't know that it's common for a married couple, both earning minimum wage, who have two kids, to live in poverty in America? And that a majority of uninsured American adults are the working poor? Working, that is, when they can afford transportation to their jobs, and the necessary childcare.

The myth of the lazy colored man who sits on street corners all day because he likes living off charity is apparently so sacred to the right wing that they remain blind to the hopelessness that faces an increasing number of working people. God help me if I ever have to rely on the kindness of people like that. God help his pathetic excuse for a soul.

It's the era of the Robber Barons. The sequel.
Edited to add: It's worth noting, with all the knee-jerk denials of racism in the response to this disaster, that when the buses finally arrived to evacuate people who'd been waiting in the Superdome or in the blazing sun on the freeway for 5 days, a group of hotel guests and employees were allowed to go to the front of the line.

I would have shot somebody for doing that to me. And I'm as white and middle-class as a marshmallow.

 

[Lord DragonsWing]

We just got back from Biloxi today alittle after sunset. We brought in 4 truckloads of supplies and there is nothing racist about Katrina. The poor and rich, black and white were in line waiting for supplies.
Multi-million dollar casinos and small businesses are gone. Half a million dollar homes and single family dwellings are now splinters.
I can't speak for N.O. even though I lived and worked there for years. But in Mississippi, people are pulling together. Regardless of race and class. They're sharing tents, food, water and helping each other out.
What few homes are standing is loaded with people. Black and white under one roof. Each family working together and taking turns standing in line so the others don't get to hot.
It's sad that racism is the point of alot of the blame game. The reason is the system screwed up. From the Federal level, state level and local level. Not one member of the political system had the balls to step forward and evacuate N.O. and to help the needy. It wouldn't of mattered if those needy were black, white, hispanic or even frigging purple. They were worried about their political career other than their people. Well, the people will speak on all levels come election time.
Until then, let's just ban together and help out those who need help. We've got Bayou La Batre here in Alabama-remember Forrest Gump? It's devastated. Dauphin Island is now several islands. Coden is gone. Mississippi is totalled. N.O. and it's surrounding parishes are totalled.
I never saw one person today in line for supplies or who those of us that were medically qualified treating people, complain about racism.
They were thankful for the water, the food, the diapers, having splinters pulled out of their hands, bandaging their cuts and just listening.
We've got another run this weekend. I won't be able to make that one due to work. But the one on Tuesday I will be on again. And I don't care who needs help. I'll of restocked my nursing kit and be ready again.
Well, there I go ranting again Doc. lmao