Okay - can I get some help here

[TNOE]

A lot of us are getting the right wing crap in our e-mail boxes - and they're going to keep coming. The below is my response? Do you think we should pull a Karl Rove and get our talking points in memo form? Or something on that order?

This is what I got:
An Unnatural Disaster; A Hurricane Exposes The Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State

by Robert Tracinski Sep 02, 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.


AND THIS IS WHAT I'M SENDING BACK: I KNOW ITS RIDICULOUSLY LONG - BUT???


I do not want to get into a “pissing contest” over this article by Mr. Tracinski – I only want to state the following – there’s a lot here, so do yourself a favor and take your time reading it, print it out and read it later tonight or on your break - because information like this is going to be the only thing that saves us. This is not a Democrat or Republican thing – this is a HUMAN thing. We’re ALL in this together.

To blame the “victims” of this disaster is the lowest form of humanity. This tactic is one that has been used since the beginning of time – whites/engines; whites/gooks; whites/ragheads-sandniggers; whites/Jews – the object is to demonize the “other guy” and for the lily whites to remain the “elite”, higher, better. Tactics like this are exactly what Hitler used to demonize the Jews before they were all sent to the gas chambers while the patriotic brownshirts clapped and spit on them. Always dehumanize the supposed enemy or victim. This has certainly come back into fashion under Bush’s reign. As Jesus said “the least you do for one of these, you do for me”. I don’t understand this new “Christianity” of the Bush administration. It seems to be “I’ve got mine, screw you”.

The new welfare state are the Corporations – did you know Enron never paid one dime in taxes – EVER? But I won’t go into that in this particular response. We’re not to focus on the rich CEO’s or their Corporations, just the poor, black people.

We do not know if half the stories this “author” purports or even true. This author by the way is one of the hatemongers from the website FreeRepublic. We do not know if in fact there was a sniper shooting at rescue teams – WHY would somebody DYING to get out of the Superdome do that? Maybe they didn’t. Maybe the news report was wrong or maybe it was disinformation.

Link: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1087205
SNIP:
"At the Superdome, we have a report that one shot was fired at a Chinook helicopter," Schneider said, adding that the Chinook is "an extremely large aircraft."
Laura Brown, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman in Washington, said she had no such report.
"We're controlling every single aircraft in that airspace and none of them reported being fired on," she said, adding that the FAA was in contact with the military as well as civilian aircraft.
_____________________________________________________________________________
So far not one person has come forward stating that they or their children had been raped. Is it possible? Sure – did it happen? Maybe. But we don’t know. Given national statistics that 35% of men said given the right conditions and circumstances and if they knew they would get caught, they would rape a woman. Just like Oprah said in “Colors” – no child woman is safe against men. That is ALL MEN, white and black. Again, if the Bush Government had done its job – the conditions would not have been there for these people to have been in that kind of danger. If you think Bush did do his job – read on – later in this post.

Murder and rape - fact or fiction?

Gary Younge in Baton Rouge
Tuesday September 6, 2005



There were two babies who had their throats slit. The seven-year-old girl who was raped and murdered in the Superdome. And the corpses laid out amid the excrement in the convention centre.

In a week filled with dreadful scenes of desperation and anger from New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina some stories stood out.

But as time goes on many remain unsubstantiated and may yet prove to be apocryphal.

New Orleans police have been unable to confirm the tale of the raped child, or indeed any of the reports of rapes, in the Superdome and convention centre.

New Orleans police chief Eddie Compass said last night: "We don't have any substantiated rapes. We will investigate if the individuals come forward."

And while many claim they happened, no witnesses, survivors or survivors' relatives have come forward.

We do know that there was looting – some necessary and some not – but regardless – anything left in New Orleans was going to soon be garbage – so why not take it? Especially if you are hungry or thirsty or your baby needs diapers? WHY NOT??? I would challenge each and every one of you to picture yourselves hungry, thirsty and in this situation to say that you would not have done the same. As far as reports of “some” (read probably a “few”) people looting TV’s, etc. – well we are always going to have stupid people – again, white or black, rich or poor. For those who have never had anything in their lives, the temptation must have been great.

The writer is again mistaken in that there were THOUSANDS of stories of people working 24/7 tirelessly helping those in needs. Unfortunately, the media chose to focus on the negative as well as the horrible conditions and chaos. You cannot possibly go through a disaster like this and everyone is going to act as if they are in Sunday School class. You’ve had people without food or water for 4 days, certainly you can’t be expected to be at your best and your mind and emotions totally in tact. Think about this – In AMERICA – fellow human beings, not welfare people, humans, the very old, the very young were thirsty and hungry. There is simply no excuse. None.


There was indeed an “inadequate” response of the Federal Government and questions need to be asked as to “why”??? I believe the charges would equate to “negligent homicide” in a court of law. WHY??????????????????????????????????????????????(See Below)


FEMA Turned Away Aid, Rescue Crews, Cut Emergency Communication: Witnesses
http://dominionpaper.ca/international_news/2005/09/06/f...

FEMA Turned Away Aid, Rescue Crews, Cut Emergency Communication Lines: Witnesses

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, several witnesses have alleged that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) turned away volunteers who were ready to help New Orleans residents people trapped in their flooded homes. Other witnesses have said that FEMA turned away offers of aid, prevented water and fuel from reaching people on the ground, and cut emergency communications lines.

The agency has cited security and safety concerns.

On September first, Sheriff's deputies and emergency personnel from Loudon County, Virginia, responded to a request from Jefferson Parrish in Louisiana for aid and set off towards the disaster area on the Gulf Coast. According to the Loudon Times-Mirror, "Sheriff Steve Simpson and his staff spent 12 hours trying to get the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the State of Louisiana Emergency Operations Center to act."

"They didn't, and the 20 deputies and six emergency medical technicians–all volunteers–turned around and came back to Loudoun."

FEMA won't accept Amtrak's help in evacuations
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/84aa35cc-1da8-11da-b40b-00000e...

FEMA turns away experienced firefighters
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/5/105538/7048

FEMA turns back Wal-Mart supply trucks
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspec... ;en=1d14ebfbd942a7d0&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

FEMA prevents Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspec... ;en=1d14ebfbd942a7d0&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

FEMA won't let Red Cross deliver food
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05246/565143.stm

FEMA bars morticians from entering New Orleans
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15147862& ;BRD=1817&PAG=461&dept_id=68561&rfi=6

FEMA blocks 500-boat citizen flotilla from delivering aid
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/3/171718/0826

FEMA fails to utilize Navy ship with 600-bed hospital on board
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509... ;cset=true

FEMA to Chicago: Send just one truck
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-050902dale...

FEMA turns away generators
http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html

FEMA: "First Responders Urged Not To Respond"
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18470


http://rhosgobel.blogspot.com/2005/09/doing-everything-possible-to-help.html


It’s All Just A Show:

50 Firefighters Flown in for Bush Photo-Op

<snip>

As specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

http://www.dailykos.com /

?

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3004197


Now this is A story from just a couple of people who where there:

hurricane Katrina - Our Experiences

By Parmedics Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky

note: Bradshaw and Slonsky are paramedics frorm California that were attending the EMS conference in New Orleans. Larry Bradsahw is the chief shop steward, Paramedic Chapter, SEIU Local 790; and Lorrie Beth Slonsky is steward, Paramedic Chapter, SEIU Local 790.(California)

Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's store at the corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked. The dairy display case was clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing. The milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had locked up the food, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City. Outside Walgreen's windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry.

The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and the windows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit juices, and bottle water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.

We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived home yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the Walgreen's in the French Quarter.

We also suspect the media will have been inundated with "hero" images of the National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help the "victims" of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we witnessed,were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans. The maintenance workers who used a fork lift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers, who rigged, nurtured and kept the generators running. The electricians who improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators and spent many hours on end manually forcing air into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks stuck in elevators. Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, "stealing" boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that could be found to ferry people out of the City. And the food service workers who scoured the commercial kitchens improvising communal meals for hundreds of those stranded.

Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard from members of their families, yet they stayed and provided the only infrastructure for the 20% of New Orleans that was not under water.

On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in the French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees like ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and shelter from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone contact with family and friends outside of New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources including the National Guard and scores of buses were pouring in to the City. The buses and the other resources must have been invisible because none of us had seen them.

We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by those who did have extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water, food, and clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute the arrived to the City limits, they were commandeered by the military.

By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased, street crime as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and locked their doors, telling us that the "officials" told us to report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the City, we finally encountered the National Guard. The Guards told us we would not be allowed into the Superdome as the City's primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole. The guards further told us that the City's only other shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and squalor and that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked, "If we can't go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our alternative?" The guards told us that that was our problem, and no they did not have extra water to give to us. This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile "law enforcement".

We walked to the police command center at Harrah's on Canal Street and were told the same thing, that we were on our own, and no they did not have water to give us. We now numbered several hundred. We held a mass meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed to camp outside the police command post. We would be plainly visible to the media and would constitute a highly visible embarrassment to the City officials. The police told us that we could not stay. Regardless, we began to settle in and set up camp. In short order, the police commander came across the street to address our group. He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the City. The crowed cheered and began to move. We called everyone back and explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation and wrong information and was he sure that there were buses waiting for us. The commander turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, "I swear to you that the buses are there."

We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great excitement and hope. As we marched pasted the convention center, many locals saw our determined and optimistic group and asked where we were headed. We told them about the great news. Families immediately grabbed their few belongings and quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and others people in wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles to the freeway and up the steep incline to the Bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it did not dampen our enthusiasm.

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.

We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the rain under an overpass. We debated our options and in the end decided to build an encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway on the center divide, between the O'Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned we would be visible to everyone, we would have some security being on an elevated freeway and we could wait and watch for the arrival of the yet to be seen buses.

All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the City on foot. Meanwhile, the only two City shelters sank further into squalor and disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any car that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to escape the misery New Orleans had become.

Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water delivery truck and brought it up to us. Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so down the freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations on a tight turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping carts. Now secure with the two necessities, food and water; cooperation, community, and creativity flowered. We organized a clean up and hung garbage bags from the rebar poles. We made beds from wood pallets and cardboard. We designated a storm drain as the bathroom and the kids built an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic, broken umbrellas, and other scraps. We even organized a food recycling system where individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for babies and candies for kids!).

This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out for yourself only. You had to do whatever it took to find water for your kids or food for your parents. When these basic needs were met, people began to look out for each other, working together and constructing a community.

If the relief organizations had saturated the City with food and water in the first 2 or 3 days, the desperation, the frustration and the ugliness would not have set in.

Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing families and individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our encampment grew to 80 or 90 people.

From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway? The officials responded they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had an ominous tone to it.

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was correct. Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, "Get off the fucking freeway". A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.

Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims" they saw "mob" or "riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together" was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.

In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.

The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact with New Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by an urban search and rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport and managed to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and were unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned.

We arrived at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. The airport had become another Superdome. We 8 were caught in a press of humanity as flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush landed briefly at the airport for a photo op. After being evacuated on a coast guard cargo plane, we arrived in San Antonio, Texas.

There the humiliation and dehumanization of the official relief effort continued. We were placed on buses and driven to a large field where we were forced to sit for hours and hours. Some of the buses did not have air-conditioners. In the dark, hundreds if us were forced to share two filthy overflowing porta-potties. Those who managed to make it out with any possessions (often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) we were subjected to two different dog-sniffing searches.

Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been confiscated at the airport because the rations set off the metal detectors. Yet, no food had been provided to the men, women, children, elderly, disabled as they sat for hours waiting to be "medically screened" to make sure we were not carrying any communicable diseases.

This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heart-felt reception given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker give her shoes to someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the street offered us money and toiletries with words of welcome. Throughout, the official relief effort was callous, inept, and racist.

There was more suffering than need be.

Lives were lost that did not need to be lost.


And Some Other Seemingly Inexplicable Stories that one has to scratch their head and ask WHY?

NYT: Navy Pilots Who Rescued Victims Are Reprimanded

By DAVID S. CLOUD
Published: September 7, 2005

PENSACOLA, Fla., Sept. 6 - Two Navy helicopter pilots and their crews returned from New Orleans on Aug. 30 expecting to be greeted as lifesavers after ferrying more than 100 hurricane victims to safety.

Instead, their superiors chided the pilots, Lt. David Shand and Lt. Matt Udkow, at a meeting the next morning for rescuing civilians when their assignment that day had been to deliver food and water to military installations along the Gulf Coast.

"I felt it was a great day because we resupplied the people we needed to and we rescued people, too," Lieutenant Udkow said. But the air operations commander at Pensacola Naval Air Station "reminded us that the logistical mission needed to be our area of focus."

The episode illustrates how the rescue effort in the days immediately after Hurricane Katrina had to compete with the military's other, more mundane logistical needs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/national/nationalspec...


Disaster used as political payoff (By FEMA to Pat Robertson)

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/343813p-293471c....

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has done it again.
Already under fire for its woeful response to Hurricane Katrina, the federal disaster agency appears to have turned hurricane relief donations into a political payoff - until it was challenged.

All last week, FEMA bureaucrats gave prominent placement on the agency's Web site to Operation Blessing, the Virginia-based charity run by controversial right-wing evangelist and Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson.

For anyone wishing to donate only cash, the agency's site listed the names and phone numbers of three groups: the Red Cross, Operation Blessing and America's Second Harvest, a national coalition of food banks.

That first list was followed by a second, longer list of several dozen religious and nonsectarian charities. This second list was for anyone who wanted to give either cash or noncash gifts

[bluestateguy]

1. They should have to prove how many of those people are on welfare

nt/

[Cats Against Frist]

2. I have the feeling that this will sink, because it's so long,

but I'm going to take the time to thoughtfully reply to your post.

The bulk of the man's argument doesn't have anything to do with FEMA. I think you should send the links, because he needs to be educated on that aspect of what's happened, but this is largely a racist screed, with little basis in fact.

I'm a libertarian -- a left-winger, but a libertarian -- which gives me the unique position of arguing with conservatives from a slightly different platform that most dyed-in-the-wool Democrats. I've learned that, from my position, that I can shut down just about anything that they throw at me, because they're really NOT about liberty or individualism, or freedom, or the free market or blah, blah, blah. Their opinion leaders, however, have CONVINCED them that the right-wing authoritarian platform is somehow more rooted in "freedom," than the left-wing authoritarian platform.

Most of what I have to say about black Americans comes from a liberal, female black college professor, who taught me exceptionally well. She was against Affirmative Action, the "welfare state," and many other programs that the government has traditionally used to "equalize" the playing field, or take care of the disadvantaged, amongst us. I never "got" it, until I became a libertarian.

So this is how you dismantle a right-wing argument: find what you can agree on, FIRST, even if you have to stretch your mind, a bit. What parts of what this man is saying are true? I think that it can be argued that the welfare state, for some people, is, in fact both enabling and limiting. It can also be argued, that, like anyone else, that it is better, in the long run, for these people to enter the marketplace, than to remain on welfare. Wouldn't you, if given the choice, choose a lucrative or fulfilling career and a middle-class lifestyle over public housing, food stamps and SSI checks? The other thing that we can agree on, even though it sometimes hurts to say, is that those who are continually dependent on state aid, are, in fact, often times poorly educated, poorly socialized and are more likely to befall the consequences of poverty: drug addiction, criminal behavior, etc.

What you need to do, however, is make this man understand that he's placing a value judgment on this state, with, really, no clue about how and why these people got to where they are. The short answer is that poverty is a cycle. The long answer is that both institutional and personal racism, combined with inadequate access to education, and other resources is what keeps these people in this state. And, again, with the poverty, comes the violence.

So, we can agree with him that people who are on welfare are LIMITED, in their choices, and could be socialized to be self-limiting, because of growing up in poverty. It's a slight twist on what the man is saying, but I think that we can all agree that if these people had something to VALUE, that they would take good care of it, and attempt to make it grow into something sustaining and healthy and even profitable. And this would be our goal -- to give them this opportunity, instead of having to live in public housing and receiving welfare checks.

Then, you need to take apart his myths. First of all, the largest group of people, on welfare (next to corporations, the military and Halliburton), are white women with one or two children. There are definite racist overtones in this article, and they must be deflated. With poverty comes violence. Not with skin color. These people are poor, because of institutional racism. Just over 130 years ago, these people were not considered human beings, in this country. Racism is alive -- I have plenty of examples from rural Southern Illinois, that would make one's blood boil, but I don't know if you do.

The second part of the myth, you've done well de-constructing, above. We have no idea how we'd act in the circumstance under which these people were placed, and, again -- anything that may have happened is a symptom of poverty. Poverty, in the black community, is helped along by racism.

Now, you ask him if he wants to solve the problem, or he wants to sit around staring at his pinkie dick and putting his fear and low-self esteem on display, for the whole world to see. Point out the OBVIOUS defensive, downright nasty and insensitive comments, in his own article to him, and ask him why he feels the need -- even if he is calling attention to a phenomenon -- to take that tone. What was his feeling, at the time of writing those things? I know that it's hard to get a freeper in touch with human emotion, but, at this point, you should psychologically deconstruct him, and use that as evidence of just-under-the-surface contempt and hatred for the poor, and minorities.

Then, you berate him. Tell him that the welfare state does HIM a favor, and every other middle class person, because it effectively "farms out," what these "small government," conservatives don't realize that their own solution would entail them having to do: making direct contact with these "unwashed masses," inviting them into their homes, their towns, their neighborhoods, their churches, their businesses, and giving them community support, and the opportunities to join the marketplace.

Tell him that the welfare state keeps people's heads just barely above water, to keep the "criminals" from storming his ranch house, and pulling him out of his Craftmaster adjustable bed, while a lot of his white privilege and his freedom was won off the backs of these people. Ask him if he's willing to step up, and open his arms, and get involved and acknowledge that this "institutional poverty," began with a bunch of turned-out slaves that had jack shit, and didn't even have full civil rights, until 45 years ago.

Ask him if he's willing to put his money where his mouth is, and pay reparations, instead of welfare, so these people can get capital to build a thriving black community with, to take care of each other, to do all the things that everyone else gets to do, because they started with land, or white skin, etc.

Then, I would launch a tear into the black leaders that have failed them -- this will get your head nodding in agreement -- their media icons, athletes, their political leaders (some, but not all), self-aggrandizing "must be the money," that left their people behind, soon as they got a whif of the white man's dolla bill. (But, that part might just be me.)

Then you agree with him, forcefully: you're goddamn right the welfare state limits these people, and you're right that some of them have been raised as wards of the state, and that they don't know what to do, because white America has fucking failed them, and that if the dude wants a non-governmental solution, that it means that him, and the rest of the Klan are going to fucking ante up and look for a creative solution, instead of bitching about the welfare class from his lilly white keyboard, and ignoring the realities of racism. You tell him that until he's ready to live with that, that all his hemming & hawing is a complete lost cause.

Then, as a libertarian, I usually launch into my speech about independent black communities, and minarchy and geo-libertarianism and black communalism. (I say that I'm against Affirmative Action, and that usually shuts them up -- though I usually get that in, before this point). Someone, in another thread suggested that some of these people combine their money to buy property, which is an A-1 fucking right good idea -- problem is -- who's socialized to believe that communes have value? -- white, middle-class liberals, like myself.

Give him a creative argument, and a creative out, and a chance to surface somewhere other than the ass cheek of a talking point. Make him feel stupid -- trash Dems, big government, and the welfare state, a little. It works. I've de-fanged many a freeper using these techniques, and you can too...for $39.99. :)