[FireFox]

People that are attempting to blame the Federal Government for the lack of evacuations in New Orleans are less than intelligent. It is not, repeat, NOT the Federal Government's responsibility to have evacuation plans in place for any city in the USA. It is, repeat,it is, the responsibility of the city and then the state to have evacuation plans in place and to enforce evacuation in the event when apotential disaster is imminent or possible threat to the lives of its population.

The leaders of the city of New Orleans, including the mayor, and the state of Louisiana failed miserably in their responsibilities. They are trying to shift the blame to the Federal Government but some of us (I hope a whole lot of us) are brighter than that.

With that forenote, Mr Tracinski explains:

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


It has taken 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 has also
taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a naturaldisaster. If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials isobvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation toevacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the floodingand rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together tosurvive; 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, andlooting.
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 federalrelief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This iswhere just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the storywrong. 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.
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 anemergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in otheremergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying thatthis is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expectfrom a Third World country.

When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They worktogether to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keeporder and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waitingaround 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, causingordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu trafficcops,directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneousresponse 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 descriptionfrom a Washington Times story:
"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives andguns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescuehelicopters 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 ArkansasNational 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 toshootand kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect theywill.' "
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 ascenefrom Sadr City in Baghdad.
What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for anorgyof looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the verybuses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying totreat patients at the Super Dome?
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 last night on Fox News Channel, she told me
that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at theIllinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicagojust blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, wereinfamous 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 thesense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrasesflashed 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 hadalready evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, alarge number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland thengave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evac! uating all of the prisoners in the city'sjails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significantoverlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in thejails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.
There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the delugehit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups:criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, fortheir lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards
were amass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed apack of wolves.
All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the citygovernment, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite theknowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfarestate, 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 arealready actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failingto personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globeand Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American"individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was causedby 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. 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 savingtheir 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. 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.

Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005

[Right_Writer]

Interesting information. I wonder why N.O. wasn't more prepared. I heard on the news that the city had a five-day conference last year to prep for a hurricane of Category 4 proportions. And yet, it seems that there was nothing in place to save the people. What a sad tragedy this has become.

[irishgal63]

I agree with everything you had to say! One very important
piece of info I heard on the news was that---what used to be
undeveloped land(was made livable)---was the part of New
Orleans that got the WORST part of the flooding !
If it had stayed undeveloped, no one would have been living
there and the vacant land would have been able to handle
the flooding ! (mother nature taking care of herself)!
That flooding is VERY SAD cause it is 'drout-like' here in ILL.!

My prayers are with every single resident
of La., Miss.,and Ala.!
Lori Weis

[breharb25]

I certainly agree that it was the city officials of new orleans and the state officials of Louisiana that failed most miserably to protect their people. I also agree that pointing the finger at the president is ridiculous. I think that FEMA should have been a little more on top of things in the way of sending much needed help, I think this whole disaster has been made so unbearable because there has been a wide range of people failing to do their jobs correctly. I dont understand why New Orleans officials would send 20000 people to a supposed "safe place" with no food or water in case of potential flooding, I mean it was a category 5 hurricane and the New orleans sits below sea level, they didnt think it would flood? Give me a break. So where are all of these people who were below poverty going to go now? Its not like they can live in the arena in Houston for the rest of their lives. Are they going to become the next generation of homeless?

[mcmama]

We need evacuation plans that work, and government has to assume some responsibility. Take a look at Long Island NY. They pay very high taxes, it has gotten very crowded. I think if you are going to allow an area at risk for hurricanes to develop, part of your planning for population density should include evacuation procedures. If a hurricane like Katrina were to hit Long Island, getting out would be chaos. The only way to drive off is via the LIE, which is backed up on a good day. It would be smart to plan now for alternative methods involving airlifts or boats and busses to mainland areas.
I grew up in Miami. At the time I grew up, there was no development on land below sea level. That all changed with the lull of no storms after the mid 60s. Then Miami got walloped with Andrew, and so much of the devastation was in those low lying areas. They've done a lot in the ensuing years to reform building codes, but new houses are still being built in the same areas that were devastated.
I will head south again after my kids graduate from high school. I want a coastal area, but I will be looking at elevation and type of construction.

[floridamama]

Originally Posted by FireFox

People that are attempting to blame the Federal Government for the lack of evacuations in New Orleans are less than intelligent. It is not, repeat, NOT the Federal Government's responsibility to have evacuation plans in place for any city in the USA. It is, repeat,it is, the responsibility of the city and then the state to have evacuation plans in place and to enforce evacuation in the event when apotential disaster is imminent or possible threat to the lives of its population.

The leaders of the city of New Orleans, including the mayor, and the state of Louisiana failed miserably in their responsibilities. They are trying to shift the blame to the Federal Government but some of us (I hope a whole lot of us) are brighter than that.

With that forenote, Mr Tracinski explains:

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


It has taken 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 has also
taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a naturaldisaster. If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials isobvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation toevacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the floodingand rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together tosurvive; 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, andlooting.
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 federalrelief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This iswhere just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the storywrong. 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.
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 anemergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in otheremergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying thatthis is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expectfrom a Third World country.

When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They worktogether to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keeporder and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waitingaround 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, causingordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu trafficcops,directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneousresponse 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 descriptionfrom a Washington Times story:
"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives andguns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescuehelicopters 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 ArkansasNational 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 toshootand kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect theywill.' "
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 ascenefrom Sadr City in Baghdad.
What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for anorgyof looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the verybuses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying totreat patients at the Super Dome?
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 last night on Fox News Channel, she told me
that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at theIllinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicagojust blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, wereinfamous 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 thesense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrasesflashed 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 hadalready evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, alarge number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland thengave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evac! uating all of the prisoners in the city'sjails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significantoverlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in thejails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.
There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the delugehit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups:criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, fortheir lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards
were amass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed apack of wolves.
All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the citygovernment, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite theknowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfarestate, 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 arealready actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failingto personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globeand Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American"individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was causedby 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. 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 savingtheir 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. 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.

Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005

I agree with this wholeheartdly!