Posted on 09/04/2005 4:23:28 PM PDT by ElCapusto
The haunting images of New Orleans were those of a Third World nation unable to cope with a natural disaster. The over-riding question in the first days following the hurricane was “What is the government doing?”
Americans have been conditioned to look to the federal government as the answer to all their needs. The federal government has steadily taken over our education and health care systems through vast programs that, in the former case, has ruined what was once one of the best in the world and, in the latter case, through Medicare and Medicaid, exercises control over the way the system works and who it benefits. Social Security has, for too many, replaced planning and saving for one’s old age.
When a portion of everything you earn is removed from your paycheck in order to pay for someone else’s senior years, how can you be expected to put aside money you don’t have to save, invest or spend as you wish? We have been required to turn personal responsibility for our lives over to “the government.” It sounds good on paper, but the reality is that Social Security is going broke and the interest level in the current administration’s effort to “fix” the system is so low the President’s efforts have been met with a significant measure of indifference.
The “government’s” response to the disaster that befell huge swaths of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama suggests that there are, indeed, limits to what it can do. It is, after all, composed of bureaucrats who must obey the thousands of regulations and laws affecting their agencies and that have been imposed on our national economy, affecting all the rest of us.
One of the first actions “the government” took was the Environmental Protection Agency announcement that it was suspending the idiotic mandates requiring countless different formulations of gasoline to insure that a sufficient supply was available nationwide. In one State after another, these mandates insure that different formulations are required in different areas of the same State.
Mandating the use of ethanol in order to insure a bounty of riches for corn producers while ignoring the need to drill for oil in Alaska or ignoring enormous off-short reserves and shale oil exposes the politics that over-rode the need for greater energy self-sufficiency and independence from a Middle East that largely hates America.
The looting and criminality that occurred in New Orleans also revealed the failure of not just local people, but much of the black community in America to take advantage of the protections and opportunities afforded by the Civil Rights and Voting Rights legislation enacted since the 1960s. As Washington Post columnist, Eugene Robinson, pointed out on September 2nd, “New Orleans is two cities, not one, according to census data---a relatively affluent, small, achingly lovely city that’s mostly white, and a poor, big, unlovely city that’s almost all black. Overall, the city is two-thirds African American; it ranks as the ninth-poorest big city in the nation. It is also one of the most violent cities in the country, now making a bid to reclaim the ‘murder capitol’ designation it held for many years.”
This is repeated over and over again in many of the nation’s cities, many of whom are also falling prey to the influx of millions of illegal aliens flooding across our southern border, bringing with them crime and disease, replacing native-born American workers for those jobs they might have had were it not for the low wages the illegals will accept.
The laws fashioned to protect and help blacks have brought about some improvements. A black middle class has emerged, but the evidence demonstrates that too many black Americans opted to remain mired in their own failure to take advantage of educational opportunities, continued to produce the one-parent families in which men were largely absent, and remained responsible for much of the crime in the cities. In return, they offered America a “gangsta rap” and “hip-hop” culture that reflects attitudes immune to the values shared by the majority of Americans. They were not marginalized. They marginalized themselves.
The physical losses in the affected areas will be rebuilt. Americans always rebuild after natural disasters, but the social problems are likely to remain unless and until we begin to shut our borders against what can only be called an invasion and until black Americans fully integrate themselves by taking more responsibility for their lives.
We all need to rely less on the “government”, but it seems unlikely at this point the government will allow that to occur. Congress is too in love with the billions it can seize for countless pork barrel projects “for the folks back home” and to insure reelection. There are too many people dependent on the socialist programs enacted after WWII. The mindless federal spending has been reflected at the state level while, at the same time, federal mandates have eroded state and local power.
We need to vastly reduce the vast matrix of economic regulations that suck billions out of the economy while creating obstacles to free market answers to our most pressing needs and, as in the recent Supreme Court ruling, destroy private property values with a ferocity matched only by natural disasters.
Life in America is going to get more expensive because “the government” claimed it could take care of us from birth to death. It can’t. It never could.
Alan Caruba writes a weekly column, “Warning Signs”, posted on the Internet website of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com.
© Alan Caruba, September 2005
http://www.sierratimes.com/05/09/04/alcaruba.htm
Therein lies the big problem.
One couldn't help but notice the lack of fathers standing with their wives and children. The federal government has replaced fathers with welfare checks.
...but the winds, they are a changing
Doogle
NOLA needs to change this image
We need priorities in NOLA to avoid future chaos.
The main priority is to make sure that every elderly, sick person or adult with children in New Orleans have their very own personal school bus so they can be assured of evacuation when a hurricane nears.
They won't have to rely on the Mayor, who may be be busy making sure he has enough food, safety, and a private toilet
from which to operate his command post.
Next, we need to make sure that shelters, including the Superdome, have comfortable Murphy beds with sheets for good rest, a stock of one million hot dogs and hamburgers, cheese, and plenty of coke. People just don't like MRE's and water and there would be fewer complaints.. These shelters would be much more comfortable for people, many of whom are so poor they have to buy generic cigarettes and settle for basic cable.. Movies could be shown and all the able bodied could be given Mardi Gras party hats to keep up their spirits.
Implementing these would help people to come to the Dome, and be an incentive for them to stay alive instead of staying home and drowning in their attics.
America is not a 3rd-world "nation". Pockets of 3rd-world "mentality" do exist in places within America, no question. Katrina hit one of those pockets. But not all of America is like that.
And those 3rd world pockets are ruled by Democratic governors and mayors!
Where is all that logistical ingenuity when their voting base really needs it?
"The federal government has replaced fathers with welfare checks."
READ ALL ABOUT IT! Get yer answers here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1893554023/103-0385754-5601458?v=glance
STOP. LOOK. LISTEN.
won't do any good, gas will be $7.59 a gallon
Doogle
NOLA will deploy their evac buses AFTER the storm, not BEFORE. They do this because they do not want to damage the buses. It's about money. No evac buses during IVAN for the elderly or infirm, either. This is negligence and is going to be a major scandal. They save the buses, not the people.
One of the most shocking things I saw in the whole disaster minus the human actions and death toll, was the sheer anger that so many people had at the government. It is sick to see so many people just fall on their face without the help of ol' nanny.
Europe is the "first world". The Americas are the "New World". The Third World is everywhere else.
Simple geographic illiteracy mascarading as "insight".
Every American knows what happened. It may not be so clear to people from other countries.
Certainly not the test subjects of feminist social engineering, aye?
CNN interviewed Nagin tonight..they did NOT ask him about the buses, only about the state/fed response..
Not in my, or probably your, lifetime. This disaster will result in increased programs by the govt to ensure it doesn't happen again. Money will be thrown at the problem and as always the results will be dismal. Meanwhile, the Federal Govt will seek to take the power for disaster preparation and response out of the hands of the states.
Anyone who sees an opportunity for less govt and more personal responsibility coming from this disaster isn't reading the tea leaves properly.
LA under Governor Blanco was a third world country.
You are right...this is going to be an albatross around the neck of liberal orthodoxy and its' political organs.
Nor will they ever mention the busses unless that fact somehow gets into the mainstream. I'm hoping Rush will beat Nagin over the noggin with it tomorrow.
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