Reply #22: Far left ideology? Like saving the elderly, retarded & poor? [View All]

[Divernan]

Sounds like a damn fine moral ideology for any human being with a heart. Of course, if you have your stock portfolio where your heart should be, like DWolper, the Bush dynasty, Chaney & Rumsfeld et al. . . . . .

Politics ARE largely determinative of survival. Remember when all the state institutions were closed down and the mentally retarded were promised rich, full lives in the community? Well the money never materialized to subsidize a decent quality of life for them in the community. I've worked in this field in state government and we calculate 30% of prison inmates are retarded. They need to be institutionalized, but not in the hellholes of US prisons. The point I want to make is that mentally retarded may be able to barely function in society, but they do not understand having to evacuate and are not likely to do so voluntarily.

And then we have the elderly - if you're too feeble to drive, or too poor to own a car, where's the safety net.? This is another group which may not be able to understand or accept the necessity of evacuating. I don't know what the percentage of elderly is in New Orleans, but in some parts of Florida, there are overwhelmingly large numbers of elderly living in fragile trailer homes. Even if they each had cars and could drive them to evacuate, Florida is so crowded, its road systems could not handle timely evacuation of its residents


Our once extensive rail system has been largely abandoned. I mean, I like the Rails to Trails bike paths, but often wonder how many communities would survive if people in them could not afford gas, or even cars, or if truckers found it too expensive to service the remote areas. Now I have just heard that many owner - operator truck drivers cannot afford the gas to operate their rigs. If the National Guard were in this Nation, where they belong, and not dying in Iraq, they could sweep in with convoys of trucks to evacuate people, and later to deliver water and medical supplies and food. I bet there is no one more upset about this hurricane than Louisiana national guard troops in Iraq.