I blame the Louisiana Governor

I love this administration, really I do.

Times-Picayune


Saturday, September 03, 2005

Bush visit halts food delivery
By Michelle Krupa
Staff writer

Three tons of food ready for delivery by air to refugees in St. Bernard Parish and on Algiers Point sat on the Crescent City Connection bridge Friday afternoon as air traffic was halted because of President Bush’s visit to New Orleans, officials said.

The provisions, secured by U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, and state Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom, baked in the afternoon sun as Bush surveyed damage across southeast Louisiana five days after Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 storm, said Melancon’s chief of staff, Casey O’Shea.

“We had arrangements to airlift food by helicopter to these folks, and now the food is sitting in trucks because they won’t let helicopters fly,” O’Shea said Friday afternoon.

The food was expected to be in the hands of storm survivors after the president left the devastated region Friday night, he said.

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Originally Posted by 1080Rider

I guess I'm a little different buster. I just think we should get value for our $$$. I don't like taxes but understand they are a necessary evil. Now, for my taxes, I want to get my moneys worth. If I pay taxes and pay taxes but my roads are shit and no one is there to rescue me when a flood hits or I crash an airplane or get stuck in the bc w/ my sled, then I'm not getting my moneys worth and the gov't is fucked. I wish we had a small streamlined gov't that could get shit done. Unfortunately, neither party offers anything like that...

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I think we're on the same page. My remark wasn't directed at you personally. However, I don't think the Libertarian ticket is the way to go. I do think that Americans need to have more participation in the political process.

Everyone thinks it would be great if we got everything in the world for what we pay in taxes--it would be great if dog shit smelled like roses, too. The right never wants to finance anything that won't benefit business directly, and in the short term, and doesn't give a fuck about those without power (=poor people). But the reality is that we need to finance things that don't offer immediate, direct benefits (like levees, bridge maintenance, schools), and people like Bush don't recognize this. People like Gore and Kerry do. To pretend there's no difference is being defeatist simply to avoid admitting to what is true.
And in the long term, even big business is served by taking a more reasonable, long term approach.

Buster, I know that it wasn't directed at me. I just threw in my $.02.

Dex- I think you're correct to an extent. Corps and people will benefit from a structured well thought out plan for improving the infrastructure.

[Takes the soap box] I would like to see corps take care of their people better as well as contributing to the underpriveledged. I really thing this is what Reagan wanted too (don't start in, I know he represents all that's evil :rolleyes: ) and I think that's why people liked him. The problem is how do you affectuate this? By legislation, prolly not- they'll just hit loop holes. We need a conscious change in mentallity in our country. We're all partners in this deal. I like the japanese model that CEO's don't make more than some percentage than the lowest paid line worker. That way, the more the CEO makes the more the line worker makes, or the better the line worker works, the better off the company and all its employees. I fear this is nothing but a pipe dream. Our culture is going the opposite direction. CEO's don't care about workers, people don't care about eachother and rap music is making people push eachother off of chair lifts. Its just sad... [steps down]

I really don't think Reagan was in any way concerned with the underpriviledged or average worker--trickle down economics was just a way of covering for making the rich richer (which is exactly what Reaganomics lead to). He just was good at putting up a convincing front that people bought into.
Careful with that Paul Krugman/Robert Reich talk of limiting CEO pay to a certain multiple of what the average worker makes--you'll be painted a no-good pinko socialist by all the right wingers in no time!

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Originally Posted by 1080Rider

[Takes the soap box] I would like to see corps take care of their people better as well as contributing to the underpriveledged. I really thing this is what Reagan wanted too (don't start in, I know he represents all that's evil :rolleyes: ) and I think that's why people liked him. The problem is how do you affectuate this? By legislation, prolly not- they'll just hit loop holes. We need a conscious change in mentallity in our country. We're all partners in this deal. I like the japanese model that CEO's don't make more than some percentage than the lowest paid line worker. That way, the more the CEO makes the more the line worker makes, or the better the line worker works, the better off the company and all its employees. I fear this is nothing but a pipe dream. Our culture is going the opposite direction. CEO's don't care about workers, people don't care about eachother and rap music is making people push eachother off of chair lifts. Its just sad... [steps down]

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Wow 1080, first blurred, now you, turning liberal on us (apart from the tribute to reaganomics)!!
BTW it's effectuate, esquire. ;)

Good catch natty- I fackin' suck at spelling, I actually have to work at it, guess I didn't pay enough attention in jr. high. :biggrin:

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Originally Posted by Mcwop

A lot of people are going to go down or look bad in this one:

Corps Pork

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I'm curious whether some of these senators, both sides of the aisle, will be willing to divert monies from the highway, energy bills etc. to help fund the recovery of our gulf coast.

I'm all for underage drinking, but how much money do you think the state of Louisiana lost out on because they kept the drinking age at 18? I know that high way dollars were the primary withholding, but I'm pretty sure the amount they didn't get to keep up highway infrastructure could have gone to other things, such as levee infrastructure.

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Originally Posted by mr_gyptian

I'm all for underage drinking, but how much money do you think the state of Louisiana lost out on because they kept the drinking age at 18?

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Mardi Gras. Not much.

And breeding Arabian horses qualifies one to be FEMA head? - farking political appointee.. :fuckyou:

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Originally Posted by BlurredElevens

Mardi Gras. Not much.

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I was there before I was 18 and after. Getting a drink wasn't a problem.

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Originally Posted by mr_gyptian

I'm all for underage drinking, but how much money do you think the state of Louisiana lost out on because they kept the drinking age at 18? I know that high way dollars were the primary withholding, but I'm pretty sure the amount they didn't get to keep up highway infrastructure could have gone to other things, such as levee infrastructure.

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:rolleyes:

It wasn't Louisiana's responsibility to maintain the levees dumbass. It was the army corps of engineers, whose budget for things like upgrading the levees was slashed by your buddy shrub.
Tax cuts for the top 1%=good. Adequate funding to protect America and its infrastructure=not so much.

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Originally Posted by natty dread

:rolleyes:

It wasn't Louisiana's responsibility to maintain the levees dumbass. It was the army corps of engineers, whose budget for things like upgrading the levees was slashed by your buddy shrub.
Tax cuts for the top 1%=good. Adequate funding to protect America and its infrastructure=not so much.

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It was partly Louisiana's responsibility, there are local boards for each levee section, locals did have a big say. Also LA's reps in both houses had a lot of say.

Did you read this article - it is a good piece (don't worry they blame Bush in it too).

Bush screwed the pooch on the response, but the levee situation goes way beyond him. A lot of people will burn on the levee issue.

for appointing his inexperienced republican cronies to head FEMA:

Advance Men in Charge
The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced this week that it didn't want the news media taking photographs of the dead in New Orleans. A FEMA spokeswoman talked unconvincingly about the dignity of the dead. But the bizarre demand, a creepy echo of the ban on news media coverage of the coffins returning from Iraq, is simply the latest spasm of a gutted federal agency.

It's not really all that surprising that the officials who run FEMA are stressing that all-important emergency response function: the public relations campaign. As it turns out, that's all they really have experience at doing.

Michael Brown was made the director after he was asked to resign from the International Arabian Horse Association, and the other top officials at FEMA don't exactly have impressive résumés in emergency management either. The Chicago Tribune reported on Wednesday that neither the acting deputy director, Patrick Rhode, nor the acting deputy chief of staff, Brooks Altshuler, came to FEMA with any previous experience in disaster management. Ditto for Scott Morris, the third in command until May.

Mr. Altshuler and Mr. Rhode had worked in the White House's Office of National Advance Operations. Those are the people who decide where the president will stand on stage and which loyal supporters will be permitted into the audience - and how many firefighters will be diverted from rescue duty to surround the president as he patrols the New Orleans airport trying to look busy. Mr. Morris was a press handler with the Bush presidential campaign. Previously, he worked for the company that produced Bush campaign commercials.

So when Mr. Brown finally got around to asking Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff for extra people for Katrina, it wasn't much of a departure for Mr. Brown to say that one of the things he wanted them to do was to "convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organizations and the general public." We'd like them to stay focused on conveying food, water and medical help to victims.

Political patronage has always been a hallmark of Washington life. But President Bill Clinton appointed political pals at FEMA who actually knew something about disaster management. The former FEMA director James Lee Witt, whose tenure is widely considered a major success, was a friend of Mr. Clinton's when he took office in 1993, but he had run the Arkansas Office of Emergency Services. His top staff came from regional FEMA offices.

Surely there are loyal Republicans among the 50 directors of state emergency services. But President Bush chose to make FEMA a dumping ground for unqualified cronies - a sure sign that he wanted to hasten the degradation of an agency that conservative Republicans have long considered an evil of big government. Katrina has proved that federal disaster help is vital, and that Mr. Brown and his team of advance men can't do the job. What America needs are federal disaster relief people who actually know something about disaster relief.

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Originally Posted by shamrockpow

Instead, just kick back and read the words of Lt. Commander Sean Kelly, a Pentagon spokesman for Northern Command:
"Northcom started planning before the storm even hit.... We had the USS Bataan sailing almost behind the hurricane so once the hurricane made landfall, its search and rescue helicopters could be available almost immediately. So, we had things ready. The only caveat is: we have to wait until the president authorizes us to do so. The laws of the United States say that the military can't just act in this fashion; we have to wait for the president to give us permission."

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.....and Federal troops cannot be sent in until the STATE requests it. When in fact the state actually requested help remains a mystery. :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by natty dread

:rolleyes:

It wasn't Louisiana's responsibility to maintain the levees dumbass. It was the army corps of engineers, whose budget for things like upgrading the levees was slashed by your buddy shrub.
Tax cuts for the top 1%=good. Adequate funding to protect America and its infrastructure=not so much.

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"In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large."


again, this crisis couldn't have happened to a state with a more inept and corrupt government.

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Originally Posted by mr_gyptian

"In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large."


again, this crisis couldn't have happened to a state with a more inept and corrupt government.

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I feel sorry that you have to watch fox news to know what your opinions will be. give it a rest blowhard

The only people who are going down for this are the little people of the Gulf Coast. Bush cronies will get a hardy pat on the ass & a hand out at the golden trough .The "Brain Drain at Fema" shows that by licking Cheney's brown eye,you can get virtually any job in the admin.


Here's a bit from the article!

"But experts inside and out of government said a "brain drain" of experienced disaster hands throughout the agency, hastened in part by the appointment of leaders without backgrounds in emergency management, has weakened the agency's ability to respond to natural disasters. Some security experts and congressional critics say the exodus was fueled by a bureaucratic reshuffling in Washington in 2003, when FEMA was stripped of its independent Cabinet-level status and folded into the Department of Homeland Security.

Emergency preparedness has atrophied as a result, some analysts said, extending from Washington to localities.

"[FEMA] has gone downhill within the department, drained of resources and leadership," said I.M. "Mac" Destler, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. "The crippling of FEMA was one important reason why it failed."

Richard A. Andrews, former emergency services director for the state of California and a member of the president's Homeland Security Advisory Council, said state and local failures were critical in the Katrina response, but competence, funding and political will in Washington were also lacking.

Low rankings
"I do not think fundamentally this is an organizational issue," Andrews said. "You need people in there who have both experience and the confidence of the president, who are able to fight and articulate what FEMA's mission and role is, and who understand how emergency management works."

The agency's troubles are no secret. The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group that promotes careers in federal government, ranked FEMA last of 28 agencies studied in 2003.

In its list of best places to work in the government, a 2004 survey by the American Federation of Government Employees found that of 84 career FEMA professionals who responded, only 10 people ranked agency leaders excellent or good.

Another 28 said the leadership was fair and 33 called it poor.

More than 50 said they would move to another agency if they could remain at the same pay grade, and 67 ranked the agency as poorer since its merger into the Department of Homeland Security.

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Originally Posted by powder11

I feel sorry that you have to watch fox news to know what your opinions will be. give it a rest blowhard

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Actually, I think I remember that quote from the Washington Post article that McWop posted a few posts earlier. give it a read - its pretty enlightening.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...090702462.html

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Originally Posted by powder11

I feel sorry that you have to watch fox news to know what your opinions will be. give it a rest blowhard

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yeah, those facts suck. especially when you can't dispute them.

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Originally Posted by mr_gyptian

yeah, those facts suck. especially when you can't dispute them.

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my comment has nothing to do with who can google search the best article to spew their party line. you drank the cool aid. If I want your opinion, I'll watch fox news.

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Originally Posted by powder11

my comment has nothing to do with who can google search the best article to spew their party line. you drank the cool aid. If I want your opinion, I'll watch fox news.

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Cool aid? These were facts reported by the Washington Post not Fox news. Why give him a hard time for actually doing some research. If you want to attack the research fine but attacking the messenger doesn't prove your point

A little late, but the FEMA chief has now been removed from his role managing the hurricane relief efforts.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,168915,00.html

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Originally Posted by CUBUCK

Cool aid? These were facts reported by the Washington Post not Fox news. Why give him a hard time for actually doing some research. If you want to attack the research fine but attacking the messenger doesn't prove your point

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my point is that the messenger propagates neo-con theory 24/7 and is incapable of independent thoughts other than what his party line dictates to him. his "research" is a basic google search of newspaper articles aka "facts" Im not on the debate team trying to prove a point. the only fact I have is I think that dude is a brainwashed mofo, thats all.

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Originally Posted by powder11

my comment has nothing to do with who can google search the best article to spew their party line. you drank the cool aid. If I want your opinion, I'll watch fox news.

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keep back pedaling. Louisiana had every chance to mitigate this disaster and didn't. It's going to be tough to swallow, but as the layers keep getting pulled back you'll see that this state's abject disregard for good governance cost thousands of people their lives.

That levee system has been around for almost 100 years. whomever is responsible for the upkeep should answer for why this happened. if 1.9 billion dollars over the past five years wasn't enough, why wasn't it enough?

"Brown is a Republican lawyer who is a longtime friend of former FEMA chief Joe Allbaugh, who himself took over after serving as President George W. Bush's campaign manager in 2000. Brown's only previous emergency experience was as an assistant city manager in the 1970s in Edmond, Okla., whose population in 2000 was 68,315, overseeing emergency services."

"In fact, according to Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, Brown was an "assistant to the city manager" from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. "The assistant is more like an intern," she told TIME. "Department heads did not report to him." Brown did do a good job at his humble position, however, according to his boss. "Yes. Mike Brown worked for me. He was my administrative assistant. He was a student at Central State University," recalls former city manager Bill Dashner. "Mike used to handle a lot of details. Every now and again I'd ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt."

This stuff may be coming as a surprise to the public, but it is no surprise to those of us who work with emergency management. The Fed administration a) used trrorism funding as a political tool, even while knowing they were throwing money away uselessly, b) gambled on getting through ths term without a mjor disaster, and c) used the agency as a dumping ground for incompetant political supporters.

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Originally Posted by mr_gyptian

That levee system has been around for almost 100 years. whomever is responsible for the upkeep should answer for why this happened. if 1.9 billion dollars over the past five years wasn't enough, why wasn't it enough?

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And who exactly is responsible for that upkeep, Mr._G, and for whom do they work? Who, shall we say, is their Commander in Chief?

Don't piss on our heads and tell us it's raining.

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Originally Posted by grrrr

" "Mike...was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt."

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AND HE WORE A HAT
AND HE HAD A JOB
AND HE BROUGHT HOME THE BACON
SO THAT NO ONE KNEW

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Originally Posted by iceman

And who exactly is responsible for that upkeep, Mr._G, and for whom do they work? Who, shall we say, is their Commander in Chief?

Don't piss on our heads and tell us it's raining.

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Reading the Washington Post article above it looks like the money was there but the state chose and Corps of engineers approved less important pork projects rather then build up and strengthen the levees. I'm sure if the state has chose to use those funds for levee construction the army corp would also have approved.

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Originally Posted by CUBUCK

Reading the Washington Post article above it looks like the money was there but the state chose and Corps of engineers approved less important pork projects rather then build up and strengthen the levees. I'm sure if the state has chose to use those funds for levee construction the army corp would also have approved.

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Ummm, that's not quite how the Army Corps works.

The state doesn't tell the Corps what to do, bucko.

Really it's irrelevant anyway. Most likely the levees would have broken regardless of who sat in the oval office. The issue is the Federal response, and what factors (i.e. incompetence, diorganization, willful misconduct, what have you) have influenced that response or lack thereof.

BTW - did you see what Whitman said yesterday? Fucking hilarious.

Apologize,

Maybe I phrased it incorrectly. The state took in almost two billion in Corps civil work projects. Rather than pushing for these projects of lesser importance, LA congressmen could have lobbied for levee reconstruction etc. They have proven they can get the money for pork projects why not for something actually worthwhile like improving the levees.

If this isn't right please let me know what I am missing, don't just tell me I'm wrong.

As you said, the Louisiana delegation has been quite successful in getting money allocated to the Corps for projects in Louisiana. But money that is earmarked for the Corps is tied directly to specific projects. Money requested for levee improvement in the most recent budget was approx. $105MM, money allocated for levee improvement was a fraction of that, less than $40MM I believe, although I don't have the numbers handy.

The Corps loves locks and dams, draining swamps for navigation and/or development and anything else that is directly involved with commerce. The corps also lobbies congress heavily, seeking money for its pet projects. Building the wall higher to keep the folks in the lower ninth ward dry was not a priority for tthe Corps, nor for Congress. Of course the Louisiana delegation is part of
Congress, but they by themselves had no authority to allocate dollars in any specific way.

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Originally Posted by iceman

AND HE WORE A HAT
AND HE HAD A JOB
AND HE BROUGHT HOME THE BACON
SO THAT NO ONE KNEW

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HE WAS A MONGOLOID
HE WAS A MONGOLOID
HAPPIER THAN YOU AND ME

HE WAS A MONGOLOID
HE WAS A MONGOLOID
ONE CHROMASOME TO MANY!!

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Originally Posted by iceman

As you said, the Louisiana delegation has been quite successful in getting money allocated to the Corps for projects in Louisiana. But money that is earmarked for the Corps is tied directly to specific projects. Money requested for levee improvement in the most recent budget was approx. $105MM, money allocated for levee improvement was a fraction of that, less than $40MM I believe, although I don't have the numbers handy.

The Corps loves locks and dams, draining swamps for navigation and/or development and anything else that is directly involved with commerce. The corps also lobbies congress heavily, seeking money for its pet projects. Building the wall higher to keep the folks in the lower ninth ward dry was not a priority for tthe Corps, nor for Congress. Of course the Louisiana delegation is part of
Congress, but they by themselves had no authority to allocate dollars in any specific way.

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who, pray tell, lobbies the Federal House Reps and Senators for these projects Ice? these reps are the ones that are putting this pork/shit into highway/energy/appropriations bills. Do you think Ted Stevens is going to divert monies from AK to LA and slip it into some bill?

You are right, Bobby Jindal et. al are not directly responsible to directing what the Corps. does. However the local reps at all levels are lobbying their federal reps to get the monies allocated for specific projects. projects obviously more important than having a levee that is strong enough to withstand a class 5 storm. which is a good gamble, it's not like any had come close in the past. :nonono2:

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Originally Posted by mr_gyptian

However the local reps at all levels are lobbying their federal reps to get the monies allocated for specific projects. projects obviously more important than having a levee that is strong enough to withstand a class 5 storm. which is a good gamble, it's not like any had come close in the past. :nonono2:

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It's much easier to get funding for new work than maintaining existing infrastructure. The corps is geared towards new construction, congress is, it's where the money is.

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Originally Posted by mr_gyptian

who, pray tell, lobbies the Federal House Reps and Senators for these projects Ice?

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So would you characterize the "right-wing" position as pro-pork?

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Originally Posted by mr_gyptian

obviously more important than having a levee that is strong enough to withstand a class 5 storm....

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Right, and without that levee breaking he wouldn't have gotten this killer fishing in:

http://www.biglines.com/photos/normal/biglines_45186.

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Originally Posted by Adolf Allerbush

Right, and without that levee breaking he wouldn't have gotten this killer fishing in:

http://www.biglines.com/photos/normal/biglines_45186.

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2 drops

POTW

These threads and discussions have mostly annoyed me because of the partisan rhetoric but someone sent me this article and I thought it was an interesting angle. I am sure the question of how fast the federal ,state and local government reacted will be investigated and debated for a long time to come. This is less about reaction and more about root cause of behavior during the crisis. Now fixing that will be the real challenge.

Comes from here: http://www.intellectualactivist.com/

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

An Objectivist Review

by Robert Tracinski | The Intellectual Activist

September 2, 2005



It has taken 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 has also taken me four long days to figure out what is 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 the past four days. 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 National Guard troops, 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 drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?

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 last 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 the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: 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. 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 apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But 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. 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.

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

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