Another report on Racially motivated delays.

[brian32672]

Clearly "The Projects" in this statement is geared more towards the black people on welfare, these statements I found quite interesting, and felt that they were well versed and the information to be about as correct as a normal human being would see it. Plain and simple, there are too many complaining that others need to help them, and have no initiative to help themselves.

(This article is more than 10,000 characters, so it will be spanned across 2 posts-PLEASE READ ALL!!!!!!)

From a reporter…….


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

Sep 02, 2005
by Robert Tracinski


It took 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 also took me four long days to figure out what was 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 four days last week. 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.' "

 

[brian32672]

Cont.


The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows a SWAT team 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 speed away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Superdome?

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 one 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 those who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then told me that 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. [Update: I have been searching for news reports on this last story, but I have not been able to confirm it. Instead, I have found numerous reports about the collapse of the corrupt and incompetent New Orleans Police Department; see here and here.]

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 incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. 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. And 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.

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.

 

[brian32672]

BTW, I personally know some people who work at the Pentagon. And these people were called in right away to take care of this situation. THEY WERE CALLED THAT DAY!!!!!
One friend, was actually on vacation and he works in the engineering dept. And he had no reservations on cutting his vacation short. He simply went in to do his job.

Clearly people taking pot-shots at others trying to save them were easily shown why in the above statement. And for others to blatently state that Bush, or anyone in the government was not on top of the problem. Well, I see those people as the ones that stayed behind, and want everything for nothing....

 

[goodman]

That was a very interesting and thought-provoking article, but it traffics in generalizations, concluding that the welfare state produces a mentality where recipients extend their hands and wait for the government to bail them out.
This may be true to some degree, but it doesn't fully explain why about 100,000 people remained in New Orleans after about 400,000 people evacuated themselves. Some other reasons people may have remained: 1. They had evacuated in the past, at considerable expense, and returned to homes that were undamaged, so they thought they could ride this one out. 2. They had not evacuated in the past and had gotten away with it, so they thought they could ride this one out. 3. They didn't have the money, because payday wasn't until Tuesday. 4. They didn't want to leave their pets. 5. They wanted to remain to protect their homes and their possessions. 6. They didn't leave for any number of the above reasons or other unenumerated reasons.
The theory that the welfare state produces either passive dolts, or brutes and miscreants, doesn't explain why some people acted like lambs and others behaved like jackals. And it doesn't explain why some people behaved heroically while others behaved brutishly.

 

[brian32672]

I hear what you are saying however Alan made a good point here on post #17
http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=97790#post97790

EDIT:: For all, remember my first statement. And I emphasize on a normal sane person. And any justifying looting, murder and oh my gosh rape, is clearly not a sane person, and should be banned from this site immediately.

Clearly "The Projects" in this statement is geared more towards the black people on welfare, these statements I found quite interesting, and felt that they were well versed and the information to be about as correct as a normal human being would see it. Plain and simple, there are too many complaining that others need to help them, and have no initiative to help themselves.

I truly believe freedom of speech is fine, but freedom of speach from a sane person. Clearly if you want to disagree with the article thats fine, but if you have any inkling of justifying statements made on the news, about delays. Then you need to read that article, HELL I WOULD NOT WANT PEOPLE SHOOTING AT ME EITHER......

I urge Clint, Gene, and the mods to keep an eye on this post. And seriosly think about banning anyone who justifies it.... I'm serious..

 

[Matt34]

Good article Brian!

I'd like to add that this blame game that the politicans are playing is of there own doing according to a couple polls I'd seen last night. Most americans don't blame anyone, they just want to help.

Maybe they(politicans) should take heed from the people that elected them and do there part to make sure the resources are available instead of pointing fingers. There will be plenty of time for that later.

 

[brian32672]

Plain and simple, there are too many complaining that others need to help them, and have no initiative to help themselves.

BTW, I get a government check once a month, I am disabled. I do get food stamps as well (trust me not much). However, I know how to budget my money, and am barely capable of supporting my stupid habit of A/V equipment. But I would never loot, kill, or rape under any circumstances.
With minimal money, and I don't drive, and I do not have a car. I would have found a way to evacuate, clearly I am sane enough to do this. I would not have stayed around so I could do those horrible things. I have seen the riots in California, and to burn down where you live is just plain idiotic, and downright criminal. Then to start beating innocent people, as well. I mean come on, there needs to be a stop put to this BS.

 

[Nomo]

It is a nice editorial. But I'll take issue with one point; It was stated that the officials did not expect the need for armed troops. Are you kidding?? Who didn't see the looting coming? Would that possibility not have been enough? I'm not in any way defending the looting, much less the violence and rapes, but not seeing the need for troops was ignorant.
Did any one really expect the goodness in mankind to shine through in leau of the national guard?

That aside; I seriously hope that no one here believes that our federal government, a state government, or even a corrupt local government would intentionally hinder rescue efforts because of skin color. Although I am becoming a "Republican Hater", even I don't buy into that crap.

 

[Matt34]

It is a nice editorial. But I'll take issue with one point; It was stated that the officials did not expect the need for armed troops. Are you kidding?? Who didn't see the looting coming? Would that possibility not have been enough? I'm not in any way defending the looting, much less the violence and rapes, but not seeing the need for troops was ignorant.
Did any one really expect the goodness in mankind to shine through in leau of the national guard?

That aside; I seriously hope that no one here believes that our federal government, a state government, or even a corrupt local government would intentionally hinder rescue efforts because of skin color. Although I am becoming a "Republican Hater", even I don't buy into that crap.

"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."

I would interput this statement as saying they didn't believe there was going to be as much sadistic activity as there was/is. They had troops activated 2 days prior to the storm coming ashore so there where troops available.

I certainly don't agree with the way everything was handled. For instance, if a military commander was overall in charge of the operation(ie. declare marshal law) from the get go instead of the govenor that fiasco that ensued would have been brought to an abrupt halt. Start shootin at war-harden soliders and your can bet your not long for the world.
"Plan for the worst, hope for the best."

 

[driver]

This country has shown that since 9/11 the ability to quickly respond to large scale emergencies Is still ineffecint . The government on both sides of the isle will not admit that when something such as this occurs that people will be lost due to the amount of time it takes to assemble a large scale reponse . The government gives the impression that they will be there for you , saving everyone .This is why everyone white or black is so angry with the reponse by this adminisration . Everyone should know that in a city of at least 100,000 the fema response in full swing could be 72 hrs after the fact . The bottom line is that the government in these cases need to state that you cannot rely on the government for your wellness until afer the fact . I am a black democrat . The "looters" as we all know weren't all black but the networks only focused in N.O. for thier stories . The outlying Parishes where the color divide is reversed had the same amount of looting but this isn't widely annouced

 

[Matt34]

This country has shown that since 9/11 the ability to quickly respond to large scale emergencies Is still ineffecint . The government on both sides of the isle will not admit that when something such as this occurs that people will be lost due to the amount of time it takes to assemble a large scale reponse . The government gives the impression that they will be there for you , saving everyone .This is why everyone white or black is so angry with the reponse by this adminisration . Everyone should know that in a city of at least 100,000 the fema response in full swing could be 72 hrs after the fact . The bottom line is that the government in these cases need to state that you cannot rely on the government for your wellness until afer the fact . I am a black democrat . The "looters" as we all know weren't all black but the networks only focused in N.O. for thier stories . The outlying Parishes where the color divide is reversed had the same amount of looting but this isn't widely annouced

Exactly, as stated in that article, we as Americans believe Uncle Sam is going to bail us out of anything and the government is not helping with the way FEMA is being used as a get out of jail free card.

Go ahead and build your houses on fault lines, next to the ocean, on the side of a mountain etc., if something happens will give you $250,000 to rebuild it at the same location where it got obilterated before. Courtesy of the American tax payer.

 

[majorloser]

Exactly, as stated in that article, we as Americans believe Uncle Sam is going to bail us out of anything and the government is not helping with the way FEMA is being used as a get out of jail free card.

Go ahead and build your houses on fault lines, next to the ocean, on the side of a mountain etc., if something happens will give you $250,000 to rebuild it at the same location where it got obilterated before. Courtesy of the American tax payer.

As somebody who has lived through hurricanes Andrew, Charlie, Frances and Jeanne I can tell you your insurance company won't help you either! We Americans (and I mean USA) have come to accept somebody else will bail us out. We also live in a society that large amounts of personal credit card debt is acceptable, again relying on others (banks) to bail us out. My personal opinion is that it's about time we start acting a little more "self reliant" and plan for our own needs.

My forefathers did not have the benefit of the U. S. government bailing them out when they lost their crops, their homes or the personal property. They had friends and family who helped out. (My familily has been here since the late 1600's) Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I was raised to be self-sufficient, respectful of others property, help out in time of need and share with those less fortunate.

Oh, and by the way, Allstate of Florida just DUMPED me last week. I have never had a claims, I don't live on the coast, my home is built better than the state hurricane code and I pay for maximum coverage (more than needed).

 

[Mort Corey]

FWIW, Allstate (and State Farm IIRC) are trying to get out of Florida, and now likely will want to cease doing business anywhere along the Gulf coast. Just to let you know you're not alone

Mort

 

[majorloser]

FWIW, Allstate (and State Farm IIRC) are trying to get out of Florida, and now likely will want to cease doing business anywhere along the Gulf coast. Just to let you know you're not alone

Mort

Don't want to beat that horse anymore, but after Andrew Allstate (and others) formed separate companies in Florida. This way the parent company can not be held liable for the smaller company's loss. They all tried to dump policy owners in Florida until the state put a ten year moratorium on the insurance companies.