yes, it is quite amazing. The churches are doing heavy lifting down here. Their entire congregations are involved, everyone I know was volunteering somewhere, housing people, giving away things, gathering stuff. The private schools chipped in, took in kids. It was truly something to see. Beautiful really.
I think that is why the whiners about "my taxes won't pay one cent" get to me. Cold, stingy, mean is how they come across. Surely feds won't pay for this whole thing, the private sector will do most of it, but I don't think this state can survive this without some federal input.
What do you think the federal gov't should pay for?
I got my fill of them last year, when the hurricanes hit Florida, three of them passing within 20 miles of my house. Week after week after week of "why should I have to pay so Granny can have air conditioning at her Bingo game", "anyone who lives in Florida deserves to lose everything they've got, and we'd better not spend one dime rebuilding it - just leave it to the snakes and the gators", etc., etc., etc. To say it got tiresome would be quite the understatement - I came real close to quitting this site for good last summer. It was very hard for me to deal with posters here running down hardworking, good people I have known and lived with for over 32 years as a bunch of morons, welfare slackers and losers.
One thing I have yet to hear any member of the "not one red cent" crowd address; let's just say the next hurricane comes along and we all suddenly see the light and decide to be as smart as you and abandon Florida forever. Like it or not, Florida is the fourth largest state in the union (by the 2020 census it will overtake New York as the third largest). It's a gigantic chunk of our national economy, and virtually irreplaceable as an agricultural resource. There are eighteen million of us living and working down here. Are you going to take us into your communities, let us take your jobs, crowd your roads and schools, buy your homes, drink your water and use your electricity, etc?
Why do I have a feeling that a huge portion of you will be telling us to stay the hell out of your communities, and that you'll still be calling us welfare bums and losers and equating us to illegal immigrants?
You want to tell me and the rest of the people in Florida (or Louisiana) where we can and cannot live, you'd better be ready to deal with the consequences. Because having us sit around waiting to die in the storm (the only way you can avoid what I touched on above) is not an option.