Little Intelligent reading. Im sure there will be plenty to disagree.

[Recordlord]

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

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

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.

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.

So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?

"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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.




Xxxxx Xxxxxxxx

President/CEO

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[ukulele]

Letting a bunch of criminals out of the jails on the eve of a major disaster was certainly a stupid move. Failure to make a significant dent in the trafficking of addictive narcotics after 100 years of waging that war is as much to blame also, but who is looking at the reasons why America has the largest population percentage in the world of jailed citizens in the first place and the greatest economic disparity of any wealthy nation in the world.

This embarrassing aftermath of a disaster is a classic example of what's wrong with the predominantly Christian Republican "everyman for himself " attitude that runs big business and national politics today. It is the fault of the whole country, not the poor victims who ended up with the short end of the stick in New Orleans.

Until people wake up and realize that the dream of owning a $500,000 fully insured home in America is only practical when they deny half the country that same opportunity by forcing the least educated or gifted a decent living wage for the hardest jobs and when they jail these persons fathers for being black and not white for petty offenses that any rich person in the country can get away with.

BTW Take a look at who wrote that sick opinion. CEO of an Airlines. Need I say more?

[zybch]

Is there any actual proof that inmates were released? You can't rely on Fox to give you the real facts, everyone should know this by now. A network that lives in the pocket of the religious right can't be trusted to provide fair and balanced reporting of anything.

One would imagine that prisons and lockups would probably have weathered the storm better than most other structures.

However, I was sickened by the violence that broke out after the hurricane had passed. I guess it wasn't completely unexpected though. Poor and desperate people who have been marginalised by their government will often go nuts in situations like this.
What exactly is the black to white ratio in the US prison system? the general population, and the government? I'm guess that the rationof black/white american government oficials would be inversely proportional to the ratio of black/white americans in the prison system.

[ukulele]

Is there any actual proof that inmates were released?

No. What do you think? You suppose they were all lined up and shot? BTW Fox news is as good as any when it comes to reporting the news . They just have a more conservative slant. You have to learn to read between the lines with all the news media. Common sense is never common down under I suppose.

[zybch]

My question remains. Is it an actual fact that inmates were released?
Has this actually been verified or are people just trusting an extreme conservative media outfit with a proven track record of lies and deceptions?

[zybch]

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1067

Interesting.

[porsch1909]

I disagree with the title.

Most sensible people will agree with the article....

[ukulele]

I disagree with the title.

Most sensible people will agree with the article....

Do you consider yourself sensible?

BTW What article? The one from the CEO or the One from Zibbys ultra liberal site?

[zybch]

There was nothing in that piece that was pro-liberal, nor anything anti-conservative. It just pointed out the irregularities when it comes to Fox and their 'fair and balanced' jingle that gets trotted out all the time but is blatantly untrue.
If telling lies is what it takes to be a conservative then I'm glad I'm not one.

[ukulele]

There was nothing in that piece that was pro-liberal, nor anything anti-conservative. It just pointed out the irregularities when it comes to Fox and their 'fair and balanced' jingle that gets trotted out all the time but is blatantly untrue.
If telling lies is what it takes to be a conservative then I'm glad I'm not one.

Who are you trying to fool. Go back to bed sleepy.

[mireland]

Who are you trying to fool. Go back to bed sleepy.

god dang man..you are meaner/nastier and grumpier then Billforce.....jeesus..

[herosrest]

In curiosity on my part, l wonder what u guys make of your news media and the styles of reporting?

[ukulele]

god dang man..you are meaner/nastier and grumpier then Billforce.....jeesus..

Oh, was I being mean to the poor uneducated liberal? Too bad! If you think that site is not ultra liberal then you should go back to sleep too!

[mireland]

Oh, was I being mean to the poor uneducated liberal? Too bad! If you think that site is not ultra liberal then you should go back to sleep too!

I didn't look at the site...I said nothing about the site did I...take your **** medication will ya?

[ukulele]

In curiosity on my part, l wonder what u guys make of your news media and the styles of reporting?

Which one? In America you can choose your flavor. In England you get just one, the BBC.

Take that site Zibby linked to above. It is home based in New York. So is the New York Times. Both are ultra liberal. Now look at the Fox News Network, it is conservative but only an uneducated person would call it ultra conservative. It is home based in New York too. The biggest ultra conservative site is News Max which is based in you guessed it, West Palm Beach, Florida (home of the fat retired crowd). The news that sells best in America is regional. You can't sell News Max in San Fransico or Honolulu, but in Jerkwater, Mississippi it's all the rage.