Moral: Never, ever count on the government
Claire Wolfe Monday posted a link to a solid piece of work by the Boston Globe chronicling in painful detail what the hell went wrong in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. "It is, of course, almost entirely a chronology of government failure," she notes. It's nine Web pages of painful detail. The clear lesson is that everyone who counted on local, state and/or federal government to come to their rescue, instead of taking care of business themselves, was bitterly disappointed. Or dead.
You have to wonder what made so many people think the government was better equipped to handle their personal safety than their own selves.
The incompetence of bureaucrats and the inability of government to be a humanitarian agency was never more obvious.
"...if the increasingly panicked news reports were right, and this was the deadly hurricane that people had been predicting all these years - city officials expected that federal and state officials had their back, that troops had been mobilized somewhere north of the Crescent City, supplies waiting. But that was only an assumption ...
'''I expected State Police,' said (Jay) Batt, who was elected to the City Council almost four years ago. 'I expected the National Guard. I expected the Marines. I expected federal support, bringing in Black Hawk helicopters, basically locking down parts of the city in turmoil. What I didn't expect was total anarchy.'"
That last, of course, is an insult to true anarchists. But I digress. Batt let his constituents down because he figured someone bigger than he would arrive immediately from a thousand miles away take care of his problem.
Wolfe points out that Gov. Blanco's request for help from the president is astonishing in its ignorance and greed - or is it so astonishing when we have let our government sink to the point where ignorance and greed are values to be rewarded?
"... the request did not include what the residents of the Gulf Coast would need most in the coming days: food, water, transportation to higher ground, and thousands of National Guard troops to ferry life-saving supplies and medical personnel and to restore order.
"Instead, she sought access to several federal assistance programs focusing almost solely on the economic recovery that would be required in the aftermath of the storm. She asked for disaster unemployment assistance, crisis counseling, and Small Business Administration loans for the survivors - all critical assistance, but far from the cavalry that would be needed in the immediate aftermath of the storm."
The people who fared best along the Gulf Coast are those who took their lives into their own hands and got outta Dodge. The people who fared the worst are those who committed their lives into the hands of government saviors. The panic on the streets of New Orleans is the end result of creating a culture of dependence, where survival requires a government check, a government shelter, a government teat.
Every so often a citizen remembers what it's all about and tells an insolent government employee, "Knock that off, friend, I pay your salary." Anything you receive from the government begins with the sweat of your brow, which is converted into wages, which is confiscated in taxes and then severely diluted before being returned to you. You're better off in almost every case depending first on the sweat of your brow rather than on the fruits of your labor as strained through machines in Washington, your state capital and City Hall. That's especially true when your very life depends on it.
This point has been made by many observers in recent days, but it is so true it bears repeating again and again: No doubt there will be calls for greater government involvement in future disasters, but that is a call for more of what went tragically wrong this time. The need is for fewer shackles on private groups and individuals - the American Red Cross and Salvation Army know how to do their jobs, and requiring them to follow the orders of government boneheads cost lives. The city officials who opened a shelter in the Superdome, in the middle of the disaster zone, made a bonehead mistake - but the state and federal officials who refused to let the Red Cross into the dome to help those people are simply criminals.
The moral of the story: Never, ever depend on the government to save your life. The sad fact is that no one cares about your life, and the lives of your loved ones, more than you do, and when disaster is imminent you must take charge of your safety and theirs. Waiting for the government to rescue you is suicide.
You have to wonder what made so many people think the government was better equipped to handle their personal safety than their own selves.
The incompetence of bureaucrats and the inability of government to be a humanitarian agency was never more obvious.
"...if the increasingly panicked news reports were right, and this was the deadly hurricane that people had been predicting all these years - city officials expected that federal and state officials had their back, that troops had been mobilized somewhere north of the Crescent City, supplies waiting. But that was only an assumption ...
'''I expected State Police,' said (Jay) Batt, who was elected to the City Council almost four years ago. 'I expected the National Guard. I expected the Marines. I expected federal support, bringing in Black Hawk helicopters, basically locking down parts of the city in turmoil. What I didn't expect was total anarchy.'"
That last, of course, is an insult to true anarchists. But I digress. Batt let his constituents down because he figured someone bigger than he would arrive immediately from a thousand miles away take care of his problem.
Wolfe points out that Gov. Blanco's request for help from the president is astonishing in its ignorance and greed - or is it so astonishing when we have let our government sink to the point where ignorance and greed are values to be rewarded?
"... the request did not include what the residents of the Gulf Coast would need most in the coming days: food, water, transportation to higher ground, and thousands of National Guard troops to ferry life-saving supplies and medical personnel and to restore order.
"Instead, she sought access to several federal assistance programs focusing almost solely on the economic recovery that would be required in the aftermath of the storm. She asked for disaster unemployment assistance, crisis counseling, and Small Business Administration loans for the survivors - all critical assistance, but far from the cavalry that would be needed in the immediate aftermath of the storm."
The people who fared best along the Gulf Coast are those who took their lives into their own hands and got outta Dodge. The people who fared the worst are those who committed their lives into the hands of government saviors. The panic on the streets of New Orleans is the end result of creating a culture of dependence, where survival requires a government check, a government shelter, a government teat.
Every so often a citizen remembers what it's all about and tells an insolent government employee, "Knock that off, friend, I pay your salary." Anything you receive from the government begins with the sweat of your brow, which is converted into wages, which is confiscated in taxes and then severely diluted before being returned to you. You're better off in almost every case depending first on the sweat of your brow rather than on the fruits of your labor as strained through machines in Washington, your state capital and City Hall. That's especially true when your very life depends on it.
This point has been made by many observers in recent days, but it is so true it bears repeating again and again: No doubt there will be calls for greater government involvement in future disasters, but that is a call for more of what went tragically wrong this time. The need is for fewer shackles on private groups and individuals - the American Red Cross and Salvation Army know how to do their jobs, and requiring them to follow the orders of government boneheads cost lives. The city officials who opened a shelter in the Superdome, in the middle of the disaster zone, made a bonehead mistake - but the state and federal officials who refused to let the Red Cross into the dome to help those people are simply criminals.
The moral of the story: Never, ever depend on the government to save your life. The sad fact is that no one cares about your life, and the lives of your loved ones, more than you do, and when disaster is imminent you must take charge of your safety and theirs. Waiting for the government to rescue you is suicide.
posted by B.W. Richardson at
9:50 PM
1 Comments:
That's a good moral, one that all our ancestors pre-FDR knew and lived by.. I even recall and old country song that stated, "the only thing I can count on is my fingers." But, the situation in NO does clearly show the success of the government public education system.
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