The “Real” Story from New Orleans
Live from Planet Stossel… Robert Tracinski writes:
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. […]
What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. […]
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.
Thank God for wingnuts, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to read about the real story. Like how the welfare state levees weren’t able to handle a Category 4 hurricane.
You are mixing apples and oranges, and thus missing the point of the Tracinski article.
Natural forces broke the levees, and while local government may or may not have been responsibile for fortifying those levees, it is obvious one cannot stop a hurricane.
With regard to the welfare state, those who chose to stay in New Orleans likely did so due to a mentality of dependence, one which likely forged their decision to chant “Help us now” while doing virtually nothing to save their own hides.
Yes, there were children, the sick, and the elderly who could not transport themselves out of the city, but the majority of the refugees were able bodied people who made a conscious decision to watch a Category 5 hurricane approach while doing little or nothing to get out of town, instead relying on Big Government to Save the Day.
Mark, where is the evidence for the following assertion of yours? “the majority of the refugees were able bodied people”
Hey, let’s totally get rid of welfare — and last I heard, most of the people on welfare were white (just saying) — and see how well that goes.
Yeah, those lazy-assed idiots should have just started walking. In a hurricane. With pelting rain, 165-mph winds, and almost 30-ft storm surge.
They weren’t relying on “Big Government”, just plain human compassion. Guess that’ll teach ’em.
Hold on, Mark might be onto something. If every healthy, able-bodied person hiked out of New Orleans and left the elderly, the infirm, and the children to drown, think of the savings in relief efforts! Why, some people they were showing on TV had two and three kids, and there were old people all over the place. If only the young and healthy could make it to shelter, we’d probably only have to find food and housing for half of the people we’re looking out for now, not to mention decreasing the surplus population.
Plus, with all of those people slogging toward salvation through disease-ridden waters floating with far more dead people, they’re bound to get sick and die themselves! The savings just keep on coming! And in the end, only the strongest-willed and healthiest Orleanians will survive; social Darwinism at its finest!
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.
Likely because it sucks. Hey, there’s always Justin Darr…
KATRINA’S CALAMITY: A car, left, is engulfed by floodwater Monday. At the National Hurricane Center in Miami (right), Max Mayfield mans the phone as Billy Wagner listens in.
DAVE MARTIN/AP, ANDY NEWMON/AP
Big relief effort meets Katrina
Early deployment of rescue teams and aid may prove key to the response.
By Kris Axtman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
HOUSTON ? Even before hurricane Katrina made landfall Monday, a massive relief brigade – one that officials hoped would be an equal match for a huge Category 4 storm – was being deployed to help residents along Louisiana’s low-lying coast.
Among them: The Red Cross called upon some 5,000 volunteers, including some who drove in from Washington State. Members of Fark.com, an online discussion board, offered to host fellow forum participants who were fleeing Katrina. And FEMA, the federal disaster-response agency, moved its search-and-rescue teams – as well as stockpiles of ice, water, and food – as close as safety would permit.
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The outpouring of aid, possibly the largest the US has ever seen to cope with a domestic natural disaster, stems from Katrina’s imposing size as well as its destination so near the major population center of New Orleans.
Such early deployment of relief is unusual in disaster-aid work. But damage projections had been so severe – and New Orleans deemed so vulnerable in its dependence on a network of levees, canals, and pumps to keep dry – that President Bush on Saturday went ahead and declared an emergency in the states of Louisiana and Mississippi, allowing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to mobilize ahead of the storm.
Forecasters, scientists, and government officials have long worried that a hurricane could swamp the Big Easy, parts of which are 10 feet below sea level, and cause months of misery. As a result, relief agencies – public and private – moved with urgency once Katrina, which led to nine fatalities when it hit Florida Thursday as a much weaker storm, turned toward Louisiana.
“This storm is so large … that it’s like all the storms from last year rolled together and probably [those were] still not as bad,” says Margaret O’Brien-Molina, spokeswoman for the American Red Cross in its southwest region. “So our coordinated efforts have to be huge.”
Last year, the Red Cross mobilized 7,000 volunteers total to handle the aftermath from four major hurricanes. For Katrina alone, it is working on sending upwards of 5,000. Staging areas set up at both Houston airports allowed arriving volunteers to get off their planes and onto the road as quickly as possible.
Red Cross emergency response vehicles, or ERVs, are crucial in a situation like this, says Ms. O’Brien-Molina, because many skeptical New Orleans residents didn’t take the mandatory evacuation seriously enough and then were unable to get far enough away because of jammed evacuation routes. In addition, the Red Cross warehouse in Baton Rouge is filled with key supplies, and 283,000 heater meals are on their way to the state.
How to contribute to relief:
American Red Cross: PO Box 37243, Washington, DC, 20013, or online at http://www.redcross.org.
Salvation Army:
Online at http://www.salvationarmyusa.org.
Hot meals are also on their way – 80,000 per day – thanks to the Texas Baptist Men, a ministry with a history of disaster response. It plans to have available more than a dozen kitchens in Louisiana that can serve “one-pot meals,” such as stew, chili, or chicken and rice. The kitchens are self-sufficient, with generators, water purifiers, and propane. To get to the most devastated areas, the group’s members bring their own chain-saw units, along with chaplains and portable showers for those in need.
The Red Cross typically pays for the food, and the Texas Baptist Men prepare it. The Texas chapter alone has 18 mobile units. Seven are on their way, and the rest are on standby, says Gary Smith, disaster relief coordinator for the Texas Baptist Men in Dallas. “Earlier this year we mobilized for hurricane Emily,” he says, “but it was nothing like this.”
FEMA, meanwhile, had moved generators, ice, water, and food into the region for deployment after the storm. FEMA also brought in urban search and rescue teams from Tennessee, Missouri, and Texas, and set them up in Shreveport, La. Similar teams from Indiana and Ohio were staged in Meridian, Miss.
FEMA also deployed 18 disaster medical assistance teams to staging areas in Texas, Alabama, and Tennessee.
Louisiana deployed 3,500 Army National Guardsmen to help hurricane victims, and another 3,000 were on standby as of Monday morning, according to a Guard spokesman.
Statewide, 48 Red Cross shelters opened to residents in the storm’s projected path. Hotels were packed as far away as Houston and Jackson, Miss. For New Orleans residents who couldn’t – or didn’t – leave, the city opened the Superdome. Katrina’s 145-m.p.h. winds ripped away part of its roof Monday but as of press time had not forced an evacuation.
RIDING IT OUT: The Superdome was a haven for thousands Sunday night.
ERIC GAY/AP
Other private and public aid – as well as volunteers – have been pouring into Louisiana over the past 48 hours. Office Depot says it will donate $1 million to the Red Cross, while Anheuser-Busch shipped 300,000 cans of drinking water to relief agencies in Louisiana and Mississippi. Wayne Elsey, president of Kodiak-Terra, a footwear company that donated thousands of pairs of shoes to South Asia after last year’s tsunami, is setting up a “Katrina Relief Effort” fund.
The US Coast Guard shut down and evacuated its Gulf coast facilities, even as it sent more than 40 aircraft from the Eastern seaboard, and at least 30 small vessels, to the surrounding area. The units will be used for search-and-rescue operations and repairs of damaged waterways.
Though New Orleans has not taken a major direct hit from a hurricane since Betsy, a Category 3 in 1965, Katrina is being likened more to hurricane Camille in 1969, says Frank Lepore of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Before making landfall, the storm’s winds exceed 200 m.p.h. but weakened to less than 150 by the time it hit just east of New Orleans.
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Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2005 11:52 p.m. EDT
Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s Bureaucrats Blocked Food and Water
The Red Cross was reportedly ready to deliver food, water and other supplies to flood-ravaged refugees who were sweltering inside New Orleans’ Superdome last week – but the relief was blocked by bureaucrats who worked for Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco.
Fox News Channel’s Major Garrett reported Wednesday that the Red Cross had “trucks with water, food, hygiene equipment, all sorts of things ready to go … to the Superdome and Convention Center.”
But the Louisiana Department of Homeland Security, Garrett said, “told them they could not go.”
“The Red Cross tells me that Louisiana’s Department of Homeland Security said, ‘Look, we do not want to create a magnet for more people to come to the Superdome or Convention Center, we want to get them out,'” he explained.
“So at the same time local officials were screaming where is the food, where is the water, the Red Cross was standing by ready [and] the Louisiana Department of Homeland Security said you can’t go.”
Wow, God, what an awesome cut and paste job. You totally remembered to remove the dashes and the extra shit that’s irrelevant.
Mari, I mean, uhm, God-
Can’t you find something better to read than Newsmax? Or are you just looking to get tips on picking up girls from “The King of Let ‘Em Come to You?”
Those who chose to stay in the Twin Towers after the first plane hit likely did so due to a mentality of dependence, one which likely forged their decision to make teary phone calls to relatives while doing virtually nothing to save their own hides, when they could so easily have just climbed down the sides of the building using toilet plungers or Post-It notes, just as the people locked in the Superdome by armed guards could easily have escaped by digging a tunnel to Baton Rouge or ascending the magic beams of sunlight so lovingly photographed by reporters.
When Katrina hit New Orleans, it was actually (I think) a Category Three hurricane, and World Net Daily reported prematurely that it had weakened and would pass NOLA without doing significant damage. My guess is that people stayed in New Orleans because they made the mistake of reading World Net Daily.
God is not only a copyright violater, but also a spammer? Man, how the mighty have fallen. So to speak.
Isn’t posting as God blasphemous? Don’t you get stoned to death for that?
I mean, it wouldn’t bother me at all, because I don’t actually believe in him, or at least not in a version of him that lacks a sense of humor, but whoever’s doing the postings in question clearly does.
Motes, beams, eyes. Etc.
I was thinking exactly the same thing. Although, I suspect that the person doing the posting doesn’t have a firm grasp on reality so I imagine God would make allowances.
So, N.O. is one huge ‘project’??
I see. (the spittle)
second, GOD!
YOU the MAN!
Yeah, god forbid anyone able-bodied stays around to help the infirmed and sick.
I mean, they ALL have homeowners insurance and their portfolio to rely on if they lose their house, right Mark?
sounds like the bush maladministration to me. where important jobs are just handed out to incompetents.
not to mention decreasing the surplus population
Excellent reference from A Christmas Carol, ACG.
Wasn’t that NewsMax story refuted already? IIRC, LA doesn’t have a DHS. The LA Gov’s office requested help before Katrina hit, but Brown at FEMA did not request resources from DHS until 5 hours AFTER Katrina hit LA. The Superdome was a refuge of “last resort” for those who could not leave NO. Does God’ hate poor people?
Christ why don’t we just round up all the poor people and put em on a ship and sink the goddam thing in the middle of the ocean. Then no one would be getting out, no bad PR from the librul media because there won’t be any thing left to photograph but a smoking, bubbling hole…
I guess the rich need just a few of the poor around to pump gas, serve burgers and keep their mouths shut. Maybe we could just start cloning our poor without vocal chords, if genetic science wasn’t a godless hell trap that is.
Holy shit, look what stossel has written now.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/js20050907.shtml
The title of the article is “In praise of price gouging” I shit you not. He literally defends price gouging with a completely made up story.
Every time stossel opens his mouth and says something as asinine and wingnutty as this, i remember that 20/20 interview from many, many years ago and wish “Dr. D” David Schulz had slapped him upside the head maybe just a little harder
Maaan, I am SO bummed that Gov. Blanco didn’t let Bush ‘n’ them federalize her National Guard. I mean, then they could have taken over NO & surrounds, declared martial law, and been in charge of ALL that beee-yooo-tiful moola that congress just approved. But, noooo. Smartass Democrat bitch hadda go have frickin’ lawyers pore over the declaration, then hired *Clinton’s* old FEMA director of all people! Geez.
Timmah420:
Economists rightly brush off “price gouging” as over-emotional non-sense, and your post reveals your lack of understanding on the topic.
Prices go up suddenly due to dwindling supplies. The result of higher prices is a good thing because it tells consumers to purchase less, and they do purchase less in response. The effect of *that* is people buy only what they need, and more is left for those who didn’t make the mad rush to the store (or gas station).
If prices did NOT go up, the first people in line would consume as much as they could, whether they needed the product or not, and the rest of us would have NOTHING at NO PRICE.
So yes, in some respects “price gouging” is much more equitable. Do some research before you start shreaking, ok?