Surely that's not all Katrina means?
Travel tip: Find out where I'm going and avoid it. Last year, as I finalized the details of my trip to Madrid, they bombed trains there. Earlier this year, several hours after I passed through the area, mud slides in California wiped out my return path. And last week, I had a flight to Orlando that was scheduled to stop in New Orleans. They cancelled the stop.
On the plane to Houston, I sat next to a man who was trying to get back. I recalled, vaguely, something about Nawlens being below sea level. He confirmed it, told me his car was parked out on the street. He was planning to land in Houston, rent a car, and drive home. Best wishes, sir, but I doubt that went well.
As the media started its blitz, I realized that one thing that might reduce the amount of aid and sympathy to those people was that accent - it always makes people think that you are less educated and maybe just a little slower than you are. Sure enough, listening to them chant "We want help" on NPR, it sounded like, "We won't he-p!" Anyone not paying attention might be tempted to think, well, f$&k you, too! I was a little too busy to watch much TV, but I did see the looting. First few things that popped into my head: (1) the camera only tells the part of the story that the photographer and the editors want you to see, (2) uh-oh, here comes the race card (from both sides), (3) what about the people in Mississippi? Later, after listening to a man talk about how neighbors in the Superdome ripped each other off, and another story that said the people that stayed behind did so because they didn't want to miss their welfare checks (ahem, people on welfare don't have the means to leave, and a retort that there were buses, and today's story that the emergency plan called for using school buses but they didn't, ... what a @(*&^$ mess, huh?), and watching the looters, listening to how people were shooting at helicopters, hearing about cops involved in the looting, that rioters were taking the opportunity to go about raping women, etc., etc., etc. ... something occurred to me: there is a severe morality problem in NO, isn't there? I mean, you heard about how New Yorkers suddenly changed their attitudes for a few days, looking out for each other after 9/11, but apparently when tragedy strikes NO, you look for ways to screw everyone. I guess the epitome of this attitude was the man who said, "There's no food or water or help anywhere, we're ready to burn this city down!"
One the race card: yes, 66% of NO is black. Now remove all of the people who can afford to leave, and I'd guess a very large portion of the remainder is black. Of those, the looters got most of the attention, but I guarantee you that most of the victims of crimes were black. After everything calms down and people think about reopening their businesses, a few are going to take the insurance and head inland, leaving the law-abiding, but poor, black citizens of New Orleans without any infrastructure. Great - they should stand in line to lynch the looters, who - by the way - included a few whites that I saw. But the perpetually indignant - what were they doing? Oh, right, nothing ... followed by indignation.
The wife points out that the looting and the nastiness is going to make people less inclined to contribute. I'm concerned that the attention focused on a city where they'd screw each other for entertainment instead of doing something for themselves is depriving the neighboring areas of the attention they need. Apparently, the citizens of those areas agree with us:
As to the blame being laid around, I listened to Michael Medved Friday and thought his defense was silly.
Various facts by way of Cafe Hayek, Reason, Coyote Blog (excellent), NPR, Drudge, Brad Delong (also quite excellent on this topic), and a few others I can't recall.
On the plane to Houston, I sat next to a man who was trying to get back. I recalled, vaguely, something about Nawlens being below sea level. He confirmed it, told me his car was parked out on the street. He was planning to land in Houston, rent a car, and drive home. Best wishes, sir, but I doubt that went well.
As the media started its blitz, I realized that one thing that might reduce the amount of aid and sympathy to those people was that accent - it always makes people think that you are less educated and maybe just a little slower than you are. Sure enough, listening to them chant "We want help" on NPR, it sounded like, "We won't he-p!" Anyone not paying attention might be tempted to think, well, f$&k you, too! I was a little too busy to watch much TV, but I did see the looting. First few things that popped into my head: (1) the camera only tells the part of the story that the photographer and the editors want you to see, (2) uh-oh, here comes the race card (from both sides), (3) what about the people in Mississippi? Later, after listening to a man talk about how neighbors in the Superdome ripped each other off, and another story that said the people that stayed behind did so because they didn't want to miss their welfare checks (ahem, people on welfare don't have the means to leave, and a retort that there were buses, and today's story that the emergency plan called for using school buses but they didn't, ... what a @(*&^$ mess, huh?), and watching the looters, listening to how people were shooting at helicopters, hearing about cops involved in the looting, that rioters were taking the opportunity to go about raping women, etc., etc., etc. ... something occurred to me: there is a severe morality problem in NO, isn't there? I mean, you heard about how New Yorkers suddenly changed their attitudes for a few days, looking out for each other after 9/11, but apparently when tragedy strikes NO, you look for ways to screw everyone. I guess the epitome of this attitude was the man who said, "There's no food or water or help anywhere, we're ready to burn this city down!"
One the race card: yes, 66% of NO is black. Now remove all of the people who can afford to leave, and I'd guess a very large portion of the remainder is black. Of those, the looters got most of the attention, but I guarantee you that most of the victims of crimes were black. After everything calms down and people think about reopening their businesses, a few are going to take the insurance and head inland, leaving the law-abiding, but poor, black citizens of New Orleans without any infrastructure. Great - they should stand in line to lynch the looters, who - by the way - included a few whites that I saw. But the perpetually indignant - what were they doing? Oh, right, nothing ... followed by indignation.
The wife points out that the looting and the nastiness is going to make people less inclined to contribute. I'm concerned that the attention focused on a city where they'd screw each other for entertainment instead of doing something for themselves is depriving the neighboring areas of the attention they need. Apparently, the citizens of those areas agree with us:
If there was any way I could contribute to Relieve Miss and not Nawlens, I would double my contribution.Richard Gibbs was disgusted by reports of looting in New Orleans and upset at the lack of attention hurricane victims in his state were getting.
"I say burn the bridges and let 'em all rot there," he said. "We're suffering over here too, but we're not killing each other. We've got to help each other. We need gas and food and water and medical supplies."
As to the blame being laid around, I listened to Michael Medved Friday and thought his defense was silly.
- Does the mission in Iraq detract from our ability to help our own citizens? You bet it does. Medved points out that 80% of the National Guard troops are here. Perhaps, but the burden isn't evenly spread. Air Force NG fighter jets aren't much help in NO, but troop transports would be. I don't know what percentage of the Louisiana NG is deployed.
- He kept referring to a New York Times article, as if that alone trumped all argument (I understand his motivation for appealing to the left with their own publication, but an appeal to authority is still a logical fallacy). One part of it excused the NG tardiness because some general claimed the freeways had been reduced to goat paths. Okay, a HMMWV travelling on a 4 lane highway with water and debris can travel how fast? Because you know that's what their built for.
- The president says that nobody expected the levees to break. Apparently, that's technically correct, but logically, it leaves a lot to be desired. Heck, even I knew the place relied on levees, so surely the local emergency response personnel, the Corps of Engineers, and others knew? Also, according to the FactCheck.Org article just referenced, the feds have been underfunding levee work for years. I have some reservations about that because I know that bureaucrats always overestimate everything in order to get some money that they apply to their pet projects regardless of Congress' intent.
- What the hell has FEMA been doing with the money they've been getting all these years? It is hardly a "gutted" agency, having seen its budget raised at something like 10% per year over the last decade, but it doesn't help to have an incompetent, inexperienced chief like Michael Brown. I used to wonder what happened to shame as Clinton appointee after Clinton appointee was indicted for taking bribes and other shenanigans, but I think the Bush Administration is catching up, if not on the corruption front, then at least on the incompetence front. Not only were they slow to respond,but they are turning down aid from The Red Cross and the mayor of Chicago (who wants to send firemen and other personnel).
- Furthermore, what the heck have the state of Louisiana, the county of Orleans, and the city of New Orleans been doing to prepare for this? Apparently, everyone has been predicting this as the most likely disaster to hit, but the response was incredibly slow. Not only were they slow to evacuate, didn't enforce the total evacuation,but apparently they didn't even follow their own emergency planning tasks.
- Medved claimed that these riots were just as predictable as the Rodney King riots. I don't think so, since the King jury could have gone either way. These riots (and the proximate cause) were entirely predictable. Hurricane, shortages, riots, QED.
- Global warming has nothing to do with this disaster. Compliance with Kyoto (which Bill Clinton never submitted for ratification to the Senate because they would have rejected it in a bipartisan landslide) would have yielded some incredibly paltry decrease in global temperatures, and so on. NO is below sea level, get it? It was bound to happen. Or would somebody like to say it wasn't bound to happen and thereby exhonerate the Bush Administration?
Various facts by way of Cafe Hayek, Reason, Coyote Blog (excellent), NPR, Drudge, Brad Delong (also quite excellent on this topic), and a few others I can't recall.
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