OK, I feel guilty about Katrina;
so what do you want me to DO?
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
EARLIER this month, Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland made me feel pretty guilty, and I thought about expiating that guilt with a column of my own.
I managed to forget about it. I’m resilient that way.
But then, Mac Bennett and some other folks from the local United Way came in for a visit and reminded me of it. Yes, they brought up Hurricane Katrina.
The devastation of the Gulf Coast has cut into local fund-raising. It’s been hard to compete with. “How many days was Katrina on the front page” of newspapers? Mac asked. Actually, he understated the case. He should have used present tense; it was the centerpiece on USA Today’s front the very day he said that.
Well, don’t blame me, Mac. The last time I had a column that was actually about Katrina was Sept. 23. By that time, I had said what I had to say about it, and was ready to move on. So I did.
But thousands upon thousands of people whose lives were wrecked have not moved on.
I find this irritating.
That’s why I feel guilty.
It was just a vague sort of guilt creeping around the edges of my consciousness. I would climb groggily out of bed and hit the snooze button on the radio because NPR was doing yet another story on the plight of New Orleans. “I’ve heard all that,” I would think as I got up. “That’s not a very worthy sentiment,” I would think as I climbed back into bed. “After all, those poor people are still…” Zzzzzzz.
Then Mr. Hoagland pegged people like me dead-on in his Feb. 5 column. It was about why the State of the Union message didn’t linger on Katrina. He suggested that maybe this was not because 
President Bush “is out of touch.”
“My fear is more ominous,” he wrote: “After a great deal of study and some polling, Bush is reflecting national opinion fairly well on the challenges still faced by the people of New Orleans: We wish them well, but it is their problem, not ours anymore.”
Ow. That hit home. That’s just what I had been thinking.
I’m a good guy. Really. I give to United Way, and my church. I don’t vote self-interest: If taxes need to go up, say, to help the poor get a better education, I’m for it. I’ve served on nonprofit boards. Hey, I was chairman of the local Habitat for Humanity. I’ve spent whole vacations on blitz builds — framing, roofing, putting on siding (not lately, but I’ve done it). Not even Jimmy Carter, the most self-consciously decent and moral president of my lifetime, has anything on me there. Right?
But now, if Mr. Hoagland is right (and I fear he is), it’s George Bush who’s got me nailed.
I know that Katrina, the worst national disaster in the nation’s history, was an event loaded with a profound message; it stripped away a veneer and exposed underlying problems that have always been there, problems that America needs to find a way to address meaningfully if we’re truly to be the land of opportunity.
We said this on Sept. 23:
“(T)here are millions of people who are so poor that they have no way to flee a killer storm. People who, even if transportation were available, wouldn’t leave because all they own is in their home:
They have no bank accounts, credit cards, job skills or network of family and friends in other cities to take them in. We have glimpsed for a harrowing moment the kind of random, wanton violence that the middle class never has to experience, but that plagues too many impoverished neighborhoods.”
I meant all that. Still do. But we said it, and on some gut level, I’m more than ready to get on to other important issues, because, let’s face it, that one’s depressing. Poverty right here in South C
arolina is a consuming passion of this editorial board. But as daunting as that challenge is, I at least have a clue what to say in terms of what we need to do about it.
Besides, Columbia and South Carolina responded superbly to Katrina. Do you think I could motivate my readers to do more than they’ve done? I don’t.
When another report comes out, as one did last week, saying government on all levels failed Katrina’s victims, and that things might have been better if the president had taken a personal interest earlier, I think, “Didn’t we establish all that some time back?”
When I read, as I also did last week, that some Katrina victims are being booted out of their government-subsidized motel rooms, I think: “What? They’re still there? It’s been — what — almost seven months, and they still haven’t found a place on their
own?”
When folks wring their hands over whether the poor of the Ninth Ward will get to return home, I’ve thought: “Would it be the worst thing in the world if they didn’t? Other communities — such as Columbia — have given them a leg up; maybe they have a better chance in new surroundings. (Maybe the president’s Mom had a point.) Maybe the rest of the country is better able right now to provide permanent homes to poor folks. Maybe New Orleans would have a better chance of recovering — and becoming a better place for the poor to make a living in the future — if for a few years it was a community of empowered, middle-class people with a compelling economic reason to be there. Maybe an electorate like that would choose better local l
eadership, and clean up the police department and other services that failed the poor so miserably. Would that be bad?”
So now I’ve gotten that off my chest — but I don’t feel better.
Look, I don’t know what the solution is. If you can think of something I can do, let me know. I’ll be glad to pay a higher gas tax or something. Go on, Mr. President, ask me. You don’t have my number on that. I want you to ask me to sacrifice for something.
Of course, the gas tax would help in the war on terror, which I’d be proud to do, but not do much for the Gulf.
So until I see something I can do, I will probably still think, whenever I see or hear another Katrina story, that it’s past time for those folks and the rest of us to move on — even while I think it’s wrong to think that.
But at least I feel guilty about it. That’s something. Isn’t it?
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Brad, When Chicago was destroyed by the great fire, there was no federal aid or FEMA to point fingers at. So, what did the people do? Private industry took it upon themselves to dig in and clean up and rebuild. Same thing for the hurricane that leveled Galveston many years ago and I am sure there are many other examples. What is different today from long ago? The welfare society is what has changed. In this age, the socialists and unfortunately many others have been conditioned through public school education, the media, and our government in general to believe that any problem, big or small, must be handled and fixed by big ole Uncle Sam. Worst of all, even while we as citizens listen in horror to accounts of FEMA monies used for whoring around, tattoos, booze, and luxury vacations, many citizens would readily turn over our medical industry, energy industry, and other facets of our life to the same types of bureaucracies. There is a reason why many of the evacuees from New Orleans chose to not go back. Other than the closely guarded business and tourist area of the city, much of the rest of it was a smelly, crime ridden mess. Much of this can be attributed to 40 plus years of Democrat programs to “help” the poor of our nation.
The real question is whether our nation can transition back to individual responsibility and fiscal sanity before it is too late. There will be more hurricanes and disasters this year so we know all of these issues will not go away anytime soon.
Brad,
This is one of the worst pieces that you’ve ever written. What on earth is the matter with you?
My God man, you have lost it! In your mind it’s perfectly OK for the poor, displaced (mostly black) people of New Orleans to lose everything in order to be replaced by a hypothetical (presumably white) middle class with a “compelling” economic interest to be there. You are a bigot! Not only are you a racial bigot, but you are a class bigot as well. You are a bigot because you do not consider people outside of your privileged economic class to be your social equals-and you control the Editorial Page. What could poor little ol’ Brad possibly do to help when nobody is asking him to sacrifice-he might cut his finger-he might get dirty. I’ll shed a tear for you buddy. Oh, the guilt that Brad must feel. Heaven forbid that Little Lord Fauntleroy may have to mingle with the commoners.
You can bet that if it were the other way around, and if you had lost everything, and if your sons and daughters had been displaced all over the country, and if you were in the minority, and if you and your family had to take the second best of everything, and if you were considered to be a second class citizen by an elite that continually has stabbed you in the back, and if you were forced to accept charity from strangers, and if you had the prospect of losing your culture, city, and home for the sake “guilty” hypocrites, then you would feel differently.
What can you do? Well Mr. Neo-Liberal (or is that Mr. Neocon?), why don’t you start by getting your head out of the big money slough-trough and coming up for some air-for once. Maybe if you stop cozying up to big shots on the elevator, then you can see reality. Perhaps if you stop floating trial balloons for your rich investor buddies, then you’ll achieve enlightenment rather than feel pretentious guilt. Perhaps if you stop promoting disastrous free market policies, then you can feel the pain of the less fortunate. If you stop advocating self-destructive free trade policies, then maybe you can understand the plight of people who really work. Maybe if you didn’t support blowing that $440 billion on a useless, divisive, unprovoked war, then you could figure out a way to spend the money rebuilding the American Gulf rather than permanently alienating the residents of the Persian Gulf, and the rest of the world for that matter. You want to fight a war-then why don’t you use your influential position to facilitate a debate as to create a tenable position with which all Americans may agree: a tangible War Against Terrorists that is winnable as opposed to a War On Terror that is un-definable, much less winnable. Perhaps a War Against Terrorists fought through intelligence, covert operations, and reasoned diplomacy will be much more effective than the debacle in which we are currently mired within. Perhaps if you stop giving our incompetent leader and his cronies a free ride on the Editorial Page, then you can do some good-or is that beneath you?
No Brad, you’re too good to do any of that-you’re a legend in your own mind. You’re quite superior, aren’t you?
Brad, I noticed you referenced NPR. Did you happen to hear the piece on NPR where the resident (current) expressed a mixture of resentment and fear at the sight of his neighborhood under constant patrol by not the police but the military. That was very interesting in that he related that this is America after all, the military doesn’t guard the streets anywhere else. But then, upon reflection, he thought back to the corrupt NO police force, with payoffs, theft, and even rape of local citizens. So this one resident of NO resented the military being there but admitted he may lament it much more if and when they leave. As I listened to this rather insightful person, I thought, right here in the USA we have pockets of Columbia (SA), Rwanda, Afghanistan, et. al. Food for thought.
Brad,
Kuddos on your column.
The one topic that you didn’t mention is the fact that Haliburton and its subsidiaries (Cheney’s former company) got all sorts of sweetheart deals from the Bush-Cheney Admsinstration for reconstruction projects in the Gulf Coast region. Let’s hope and pray that Haliburton doesn’t use the same management teams and crews in the Gulf Coast region that it has been using in Iraq.
PS — I also assume that Dave (another commentor)advocates that all federal contracts with the private sector for reconstruction projects in the Gulf Coast region be summarily cancelled. According to Dave, the private sector will step in and do the same job with its own fiscal resources.
Great column today, Brad. I have been poor and I understand poor. If this had been my circumstance, I could not imagine sitting around waiting for someone else to order my life. Time to move on, folks.
Mark, for crying out loud, give Brad a break. I mean, the least you can do is acknowledge that he is willing to be vulnerable. To me, visiting someone’s blog is like visiting their home; even if we disagree with them,we can at least show them respect for their hosting it.
Brad could have just stayed off the issue, or written in a totally impersonal tone. As it was, he opened up, and you call him a bigot? OK, Jesus called the Pharisees hypocrites, but He also warned us about the danger of hellfire just for calling someone else a fool. I take that to mean if we demean someone’s character, we had better be prepared to back it up with a lot of hard facts. That won’t bother the extremists on this blog, but you claimed to hold the Gospels in high regard, right? You’d be better off letting God be Brad’s judge, rather than doing the job yourself.
If the federal politicians had the guts to do the right thing, they would not spend one more cent to rebuild New Orleans (most of which would be stolen by the local Democrats who run the state and parish).
Let the private sector rebuild it where and how it makes economic sense.
This would require NC, SC, VA, FL, TX, AL, GA, and MS giving up federal flood insurance on coastal development – which would be another good thing.
John Hartz – It is worth a look to see the contractual money requests that have been submitted by the LA politicians. I don’t know about you but I resent helping to pay for a new shrimp museum for one among many billions of dollars that have requested. But I do wonder if tall people would fit through the entrance of that shrimp museum.
To answer your question though, other than rebuilding military bases or defense facilities that were damaged, there would not be one penny of federal money spent on rebuilding the Gulf Coast, not even Mary Landrieu’s or Trent Lott’s beach houses.
Warthen thinks Jimmy Carter is “the most self-conciously decent and moral president” of his lifetime. I ask you, is there really anything else you need to know about Brad OR the editorial board at “thestate” newspaper? I am convinced that readership and circulation are down for newspapers for very real reasons ~ reasons that become very apparent when one considers what these people say and expect us to believe. Keep it up Brad…just like buggywhips and vinyl records! Fritz
A sense of guilt is a useful thing. It may seem paradoxical, but Brad’s sense that “it’s time to move on” is correct at the same time that it is also appropriate that we are continually reminded of the issues Katrina raised. There will always be more challenges in the world than we as individuals can do something about at any one time (unless perhaps, you’re Bill Gates). Hence the United Way’s challenge in the current climate. I for one appreciate those in the media, government, and the private sector who are trying to keep Katrina and New Orleans on the agenda.
So I won’t be joining Mark in condemning your column, Brad. Except that paternalistic passage about the “empowered middle-class” people choosing better leadership, etc. Yikes! You might want to rethink that.
In tribute to that passage, I offer a new saying for 21st-century America: “Home is where the ‘Compelling Economic Interest’ is.”
Thanks Brad. Now I feel a little less guilty.
I’m with Brad. Take a look at all of the help available in the Big Easy:
There’s more, much more, so what more do you want?
There’s loads of politics, state and local politicians want to be in charge of a big bucket of money, but there’s already bucketfuls of loot available, although at least one of the many local levee / lake commissions has decided to spend money wisely. There’s also lots of legal shenanigans holding things up. Many property owners won’t permit demolition of their destroyed properties, so contractors with demolition equipment are sitting idly by. The Louisiana Environmental Action Network has filed a suit against the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality for using a landfill; the quality of landfill monitoring seems to be at issue. Federal, state, and local government lawyers are being kept busy preventing progress so as to avoid any and all lawsuits.
It seems to me that matters are well in hand.
Mike C. – After viewing the help resources, it appears everything has been thought of, even a suicide prevention center. But, people are still committing suicide. Yep, it’s Bush again, they all know he hates them there and so it’s his fault they are committing suicide. Bush did it. What a monster we have in the White House, sitting up there in the Oval Office, or worse yet, clearing brush at his ranch in Crawford, while these Katrina victims kill themselves. Can’t NPR do a special on this and get some publicity? CNN? Anyone?
So Brad admits that he takes his cues from the latte liberals at NPR?
What a surprise!
Wow,no wonder that Starbucks’ “Accept Diversity” cup set you off.Your bigotry is all-inclusive.The piece reminded me of a song from Merle Haggard’s latest album about the war in Iraq:”Rebuild America First”.
i suggest you read an article about brian williams of nbc news on http://www.the globalist.com about continuing coverage by nbc news about katrina. it has not helped their ratings, but it keeps accountability for government promises and provides for continued coverage of a national tragedy. in your role of an editor of a regional newspaper, i think it is important that you monitor local planning efforts for our next natural disaster and keep us informed on our government’s promises and whether they are being kept. the fourth estate is the only place right now to measure accountability. i am still struck by the fact that new york city has yet to rebuild at the twin tower sites. failure to rebuild on the gulf coast and new york city hurts us internationally in both prestige and giving propoganda to our enemies.
Jimmy Carter – our most child-like President.
Brad, You’ve nailed it, but nobody is comfortable with the reality. I spent a week there in November, and have never seen such devastation in my lifetime. The reality is that there is no simple answer for hard questions, and this situation presents a deeply complex set of questions that defy any quick fixes. While there, I spoke w/ city leaders, business people, and displaced residents. This is not a rich vs. poor discussion, but a discussion of deep tragedy for all citizens of the city, and for anyone who loves aspects of the culture it formerly had.
Like us, it wasn’t perfect, by any stretch. Since it wasn’t perfect before, it won’t be perfect again, no matter whose definition is used.
The political sideshow just adds another layer of cruelty. Bush was asleep at the switch; even his ardent supports must admit that. His Jackson Square promises were made as a show of come-from-behind sensitivity. Unfortunately, his promises were ill-considered, and thus impossible to keep given the scope of the problem. I’m sure he had no intention of setting up the additional cruelty his promise to rebuild created, but the fact is that his promise put all plans (government, business, and personal) in freeze-frame while all waited for the federal government to act. After all, resources were limited, so why would anyone commit any scarce resources to something that the federal government was going to do anyway?
Now, the people in New Orleans and beyond have realized that the trumpet they heard from Bush was not the calvary coming over the hill to rescue their beleagered wagon train, but a mere tinkling of a politician’s wind-chime that faded with the rustling of the wind. His decision to fail to make good on his promise was clearly announced in his State of the Union speech, by his light handling of this topic. Better that he’d never have showed up at all. Better for the rebuilding effort, and ultimately better for him and his party.
In our polarized political situation of the day, there is a lot of lying allowed by each side of the aisle. Each side is comfortable with the known lies told by their respective news sources. In a more perfect world, we should hold politicians we support to a higher standard. I don’t know what the political climate was when the Chicago fire or the San Francisco earthquake wrought their destruction, but as for the major tragedy of my lifetime, the political lie told sure has taken its toll.
Why can’t we stop this silly allegience to the “party line”. If people would only hold their political party to the standard they do each other, then we could all “Move On” which seems to be a in-vogue phrase. If we are to truly move on and have effective governance, then we must all demand more truth on which to plant our feet for the move. We are all, like it or not, living in the same bog of accepted political deceit.
Herb,
I’m feeling very ill today (I called in sick), but briefly let me address your post. I like Brad. Brad is a decent person overall. Was my blog piece too heavy handed? Perhaps. Was it acerbic and sarcastic? Yes. Was it in a voice that I don’t normally use? Absolutely. Was is called for? I think so-and I believe this to be true because racism (especially in the workplace) is definitely making a comeback. Many black people would reflect the same sentiment that I espoused in the previous piece if they were not scared of reprisals from management and from the white community in general. I have close relationships with black people (including the black people within my own family, of course) that most white people don’t have. People who participate on this blog are overwhelmingly white and middle class. My views on the other hand, in large measure reflect the worldview of a sizeable portion of working class people in general (outside of the South), and in the previous blog piece of mine, the views of black workers within the South. Admittedly, I share the views of most black people. I felt compelled to write the previous blog piece because too many black people fear reprisals or don’t have access to a computer with internet capabilities to do so. Brad and I are both native denizens of South Carolina, and we both know our history all to well. I’ve no intention of letting SC slip back into Jim Crow-I can only hope that Brad feels the same way. I was shocked after digesting his editorial; hence my reply.
I ran for congress on a civil rights political party ticket back in 2002 because no Democrat would run in the Second Congressional District, and I wanted the disenfranchised to have a voice and a choice. I received 10% of the vote (mostly black people voted for me) in a heavily white, gerrymandered district.
I fight against injustice (including racism) every day at work (many of my coworkers will attest to this). I’ve been repeatedly threatened and harassed by the management of a Midwestern corporation (especially by the CEO of Columbia Operations, as he calls himself: a member of the Chamber of Commerce) that supposedly merits its Fortune 100 best company rating (its amazing what companies can do when they cherry-pick employees for the Fortune survey, isn’t it?). This morning, I was again threatened via a phone call made by the company-all because I didn’t back down when the CEO yanked me off the production floor into his office one day to order me to shut up in shop meetings about a racist episode concerning a white manager screaming at a black production worker in a company bathroom, because of my public criticism of the Chamber of Commerce, and because on several occasions I’ve reported racist incidents to a dead ear Human Resources (There’s a reason for that too). Although I am still employed to my knowledge, I’m sure that I’ll be fired within the next few days. Boy, do I have a story to tell you after I am fired (I can’t tell you what company it is yet, because then they will have cause to fire me!). Hundreds and hundreds of black employees have been run off from the company during the year or so since it has moved here (the West Columbia location surely has less than 400 employees). The company came here with the knowledge that they could treat people as poorly as they desired without penalty. I suppose that soon the truth will come to light!
Larry, this is like beating the dead horse, but you said “Bush was asleep at the switch” and that is simply false. Two and a half days before Katrina hit east of NO, the feds issued emergency orders for evacuation. Mayor “Chocolate City” Nagin and Gov. “Clueless” Blanco did nothing with those requests. You can look it up. Was the federal govt blameless in all of this? No, but this is the bureaucratic operation that we all know of so where is that surprise. This nation has had literally hundreds of major hurricanes and the Feds have handled them over and over, before and after Katrina. A major disaster had never smacked into a welfare ghetto before and that is the real difference. A whole city of people who have been conditioned to “let someone else do it”. Need water, gimme it. Need food, gimme. Need housing, gimme. Need medicine, gimme. Gimme, gimme, gimme for several generations. That was the real disaster. So set the political party aspersions aside. This is all about an entire population of people, black and white, who are basically modern day societal invalids. That is what needs to be changed, not storm or aid management.
Interesting, Mark. Appreciated the background info. I just came back from a meeting with a black pastor. Very helpful to me, but more on that perhaps later.
But I still don’t see why you called Brad a bigot, and I’m not sure you caught his “tongue-in-cheek” satire in writing that piece.
OK Mike, check this initiative of Tony Evans out. I know it is evangelical to the core, but that is personally where I am at. If this is a workable solution (and I don’t know yet if it is), it saves having to re-invent the wheel. What I don’t know is whether this particular plan has the curriculum content that is needed, and doubtless it would have to be tweaked for South Carolina, but I think it is worth looking into.
I would post this on your blog, but I can’t see that anything is going on there right now. Last entry was Feb. 7th, right?
I’m still having different meetings with various church leaders about the issues. It is not going to be easy to rock the status quo, perhaps, but on the other hand, I think there are a lot of very fine, motivated young people who could be motivated to tutor kids. Maybe.
Why is everything suddenly bold-face? I didn’t do it. Maybe if I try a /b command? If it does, then Mark is the culprit.
Nope, I guess we’ll have to blame Bush again.
Brad,
You need to feel ashamed. I live 50 miles north of New Orleans and my mother lives in Pass Christian Mississippi. Exempting the military, the government response on all levels has been criminal. Lots of talk of help but in reality nothing. At best I can say debris is being removed, but billions of tons remains. Money has been “allocated” but not delivered. According to the government itself, FEMA is manging a 50% overhead on this money. Only 3.5 % of contracts are going to local companies. To date Louisiana has received zero money to rebuild. Mississippi and Louisiana HAVE been deserted by this nation. The devastation is too vast for its attention span. Also the victims are a color that make Americans feel a little quesy. The locals have been working their butts off in an unending stressful environment. I know I can’t convince any of you because the only way you can understand is to come down and see for yourself. You have my e-mail. I have a room ready for you to stay.
DoctorJ – Over a half a billion dollars in fed money spent on hotel, motel, and temp housing alone and the US has forgotten and abandoned LA and Mississippi. You must be kidding the rest of us. FEMA is trying to find contractors to work in a dangerous and extremely expensive environment, and you whine about some overhead. Ungrateful you are beyond belief. I hope none of my charitable gifts went to someone like your ungrateful self.
Brad,
I live this disaster. Sorry if you don’t like that what I see with my eyes doesn’t fit what the news tells you. I have e-mailed you some of my pictures. I have cried everyday since Aug. 29, 2005. I have heard a president I voted for twice lie to his fellow Americans. I have heard my state trashed from the get go. I use to believe in the American government. I don’t anymore. I have seen it in action. I do believe in the goodness of the American people. The volunteer students and church groups have been wonderful!
Dave, you didn’t contribute any charitable gifts, because you can’t donate to charity with money that doesn’t belong to you. As long as you keep living on handouts collected from the federal government.
Take 36% of your federal taxes, send that money to people like me who are paying their own share of federal taxes and yours too. After doing that, then you can talk about your “charitable contributions.”
Mary, the operative phrase in your post above is “Send money to people like me”. You won’t find me begging you for money as I am self sufficient. You, and the socialist and communist leeches like you, live your life looking for money from others. And just like doctorj on this thread, no matter what is given, or by whom, it will never be enough. If someone else has worked hard to earn and accumulate $1 more than what they have, they resent it and will use the legislative, courts, and tax system to confiscate that $1.
At this point we can all be thankful that we have conservative adults running the Congress, Executive, and Judicial branches. Because of that, your perpetual money grab will be thwarted.
“I hope none of my charitable gifts went to someone like your ungrateful self.”
Dave, don’t worry your greedy little heart. I didn’t take a penny of anybody’s aid. Now my 80 year old mother did get bottled water and tetnus shots from the Red Cross. Drinkable water wasn’t available in her home for over four months. As a conservative you should be just as mad as I am at an incompetant government, that is unless you think waste is good. I send $40,000 to this governmnent every year and I expect it to be used wisely.
Brad, My last post was meant for Dave, not you. Sorry for the error.
You expect the government to use you money wisely?
What government would that be?
Can anyone explain to me why Brad is being called a bigot and a moron for baring his soul and asking for leadership with regard to the aftermath of Katrina? Maybe I read a different piece than everybody else did, or maybe I am just too dense to get it, but I don’t see where it is coming from. Please enlighten the bewildered.
It makes no sense for anyone to feel guilty because a hurricane blew away houses hundreds of miles away. It is normal to feel compassion and fine to express that with one’s own time and money.
Just don’t start trying to make yourself feel better by telling innocent bystanders that they have to pay more taxes for a corrupt Louisiana government to embezzle.
Herb,
Did I totally misread this piece? This piece sounded like abandonment of black people to me. Of course, I would never call Brad a “moron”. Do you support Brad’s suggestion that the black people stay where they are, and that middle class people occupy New Orleans instead? Do you really think that the black people will ever be repatriated, or will they be blown off and forgotten. We’re supposed to sit back and do nothing? Certainly, Brad can do something if he would. For example, he could write an editorial about getting those 10,000 trailers from Arkansas to New Orleans. I’m not being sarcastic here, but if you would enlighten me, what in Brad’s piece indicated to you that Brad was “baring his soul and asking for leadership with regard to the aftermath of Katrina”? Perhaps I owe Brad an apology.
doctorj – I saw your pics and yes if that was your home or your mom’s home it got whacked but good. That is something I would not wish on anyone. As a taxpayer who is regarded as being greedy because I would like to see some sound fiscal management applied in that area specifically is bizarre. Here is part of my vantage point. The people of the affected areas voted into office the Long family (Huey), the Murial family, the Landrieu family and a whole host of others for as long as anyone can remember. These politicians abused the tax monies via political graft and many other forms of corruption. George Bush did not OWN LA or MISS. So, now when there is a horrible natural tragedy, you direct all of your venom at our president, not at your duly elected corrupt politicos. Maybe you never voted for a single one of the miscreants, but the majority of the residents there did. The storm itself was a natural phenomenom but the levies failing was symbolic of the years and years of failed government right under your nose. So, even if your family is totally innocent of this scenario, collectively the whole population can be blamed for what happened. So, should Brad or I now feel guilty that your local and state corrupt leaders failed your region? I think not. Where is your outrage at the “local leaders” who took the Army Corps dollars intended for levy strengthening and used it for local pork projects? I guess it is easier to play the blame game on the federal level.
Lastly, your pics show a single story wood frame house. I don’t think any architect or builder would have judged that home capable of withstanding a Cat 4 or 5 storm. Since you knew you were in a proven hurricane zone, you actually bear some direct responsibility for negligence. Is it too much to ask that people in the US take some personal responsibility? A true conservative would take some responsibility for this and get on with it. I wish you and your family no ill will or bad times, to the contrary I hope you recover in good stead, but crying about this reality will not get anyone anywhere.
To add to what DAve said, why should “blacks be repatriated to New Orleans”? Many owned no real estate. They were renters, of apartments and houses which are now destroyed.
The free market may decide to build new apartments, but why should they build slums for gang members and their hapless women and babies? If you were a real estate investor, wouldn’t you choose the best tenants and buyers you could attract?
This is an opportunity for New Orleans to start over with a new and better class of leadership and new residents.
“They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality…and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening.”
George Orwell
Lee and Dave, you guys continue to amaze me. Lee– “Many owned no real estate.” Horrors! Then they must be “gang members” and even lower on your scale of humanity, “hapless women and babies.” And Dave, I’m intrigued by your “collectively the whole population can be blamed for what happened.” I think I’ve heard of some guys with turbans and beards who use similar logic.
Lot of renters in New Orleans were fine, hard-working people. Lots were gang members.
Just check the spike in crime due to the displacement of these bad apples to Houston, Nashville, Atlanta, etc.
How do the liberal guilt-trippers plan to rebuild public housing and keep the thugs out? They have no plan. They don’t have the guts to clean up the wreckage of their Great Society.
Mark, you really are a target rich environment for a conservative. You visualize 10,000 mobile homes trucking down the interstate from ARkansas to New Orleans. Now that would be a site. Would they only need one pickup in front with blinking yellow lights and the Wide Load sign and one in the back? I can tell you this, a neighbor of mine has a daughter who lives near NO. In parish after parish, the locals are fighting intensely to keep the federal trailers out of their areas. I can’t say why other than to speculate that most people do NOT want brand new trailer parks with a heavy infusion of welfare people in their neighborhoods. So, are they selfish and greedy? As doctorj noted, the rest of America has given up on the people in LA and MIss. I would ask who is giving up on who in this case.
Also Mark, I hope you still have your job but you are missing an opportunity you know. One phone call to Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton and they will be right down to fight for your rights. But, when they see you are white, that may be an issue, correct? But they surely are not racists, are they?
Phillip – As I noted, not directly, but indirectly, the populations of a state that condone or even simply ignore corruption and criminal activity have to share (indirectly) in the responsibility for the outcomes. Many Germans had nothing at all to do with the Nazi regime but were apathetic and indifferent to what was happening. While not directly responsible, those Germans shared and still share a collective guilt over what went on. Can you not understand my point? By the way, I know you are very conscious of intolerance and your comment about people with turbans and beards would offend some ethnic people. See how easy it is to be the pot calling the kettle?
Mark, I took this quote as tongue-in-cheek. Now maybe my hermeneutics is off, in which case Brad can correct me. But what I was hearing was a struggle between the sense that it is time to move on, and the knowledge that this tragedy will continue for a lot of people. I took Brad’s last sentence to be ironic; he is in no way satisfied with just “feeling guilty,” but senses that until the country’s leadership leads in the matter, it is very hard to move anyone to do anything.
I may be wrong in my interpretation; only the author can set it straight.
Oh, and Mark, I wasn’t saying that you called Brad a moron. That word was not a quote, but rather an attempt, though perhaps a poor one, to summarize what others were saying about him.
You are correct, sir. That indeed was irony. People are always warning me not to use it, but I do it anyway. A compulsion, I suppose.
I’ll add that anyone who could read the second paragraph of the piece…
“I managed to forget about it. I’m resilient that way.”
… and NOT recognize the thread of irony that I pick back up in the end, should never, under any circumstances, try to read Mark Twain.
My use of irony is a weak, pathetic, diluted thing compared to his. If people get giddy and lose their sense of perspective when they consume my poor fare, the genuine article might prove fatal to them.
And yes, for you English majors out there, I just used irony again — along with metaphor and hyperbole.
Oprah did a great show today on Katrina stories never told. The victims kept trying to say that people have forgotten but they care. We all know none of you care. I am going to use a link to this discussion on oprah’s message board as an example of the values of many of today’s Americans. You are a sad, sad bunch.
Dave, by “send money to people like me,” I mean return the overpayments of taxes made by people like me, the overpayments that finance your freeloading. I live in a state in which the federal taxes collected somewhat exceed the federal services and expenditures we receive, although in many liberal states, the disparity is substantially greater.
Our overpayments go to finance the services, subsidies and handouts people in states like South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Wyoming, and other conservative states depend on for their survival. You, for example, receive $1.36 in handouts for every $1.00 you “pay” in federal taxes. Far from being a victim of leeches, you are a bum and a freeloader, depending on handouts from the selfsame “leeches” you despise.
Your sending money to me wouldn’t constitute supporting me. It would constitute (for the first time in your life) supporting yourself. You can call people leeches all you want, you can talk about taxing productive citizens all you want, you can sneer at liberals all you want. But the fact remains that we pay for you to survive. We pay more in federal taxes than we receive in federal services, and that money goes to keep you from starving to death. You are an ignorant, shiftless, worthless freeloader, who doesn’t have the decency to be grateful for the people whose industry and initiative enable them to pay the taxes that finance the handouts you depend on for your survival.
I’ll wager that Louisiana doesn’t have a corner on being ill-prepared; I expect that when Hugo hits again, not much on the Isle of Palms will be left standing. I don’t have a clue as to what it will mean for the low-income housing people in North Charleston, but I’m sure someone who lived through the last Hugo can enlighten me.
At the risk of being accused of being a biblicist, I think that Luke 13:4-5 applies here to a degree. While humans are responsible, we do have a tendency to separate ourselves very comfortably from suffering humanity, and forget that there is such a thing as human solidarity. It is interesting how many of us can seem to be able to see very clearly the speck that is in our brother’s eye.
Sheesh! I go away for a couple of days and look what happens.
A whole bunch of folks are real good at throwin’ the race card around, but it’s not one I’ll buy. Why are all of you focusing on the poor black folks in New Orleans when folks of all races and all socio-economic situations were hit and still hurt all along that coast? I cannot see into hearts they way some of you can and pin a label like “uncaring racist” on someone’s chest so readily.
The charge of “racism” has always seemed particularly political; what’s ironic is that many of the measures put in place to assist aspiring minority firms have worked against them. Why aren’t black-owned businesses getting much work in the area? They don’t know how to bid the jobs in competition with other firms. They’ve never had to because they’ve been able to rely on set-aside programs at the federal, state, and local levels. What’s been intended to give these firms a leg up has in fact made them less able to compete. (For what it’s worth, I’ve worked in federal contracting for a whole bunch of years and have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly.)
Back in September I wrote this in frustration at the racial overtones of the Katrina coverage. Only locally was the plight of the Vietnamese shrimpers much of a deal. I wondered why, but knew the answer all along — those folks came over here, worked hard as individuals while maintaining a sense of community, and didn’t get involved in politics to get ahead, but looked to work, saving, and investment to get ahead. They took care of themselves and their own, just wanting a chance to make it.
Over the generation or so that these yellow folks have been toiling away, too many blacks, browns, and whites have relied on this government program or that, believing that it was political leaders and politics that would help them advance. Well, the politicians did get elected, and some did quite well. But the mass of folks who turned out on election day after election day got squat. Oh, there were a few successes, folks who got a TV channel license or a brewery or even a Ford dealership, but most of them were relatives or close associates of the politicians.
And now you expect the Leviathan to turn on a dime and re-build a city that can’t even manage to tear down buildings out of fear of getting sued? “More than six months have gone by, and nothing’s happened, the blacks have been abandoned.” Right. Meanwhile, what’s happening in Mississippi and Alabama? Probably just slow, steady progress. But folks have to do most of it on their own. There’s still loads of money available, but it should be wisely spent. We know it won’t be, but we all have to realize that when the local yokels promote grandiose plans for spending other people’s money, they’re just slowing things down.
Can’t we agree that some of the proposals coming out of Louisiana must have Huey Long spinning in his grave? No one in that state has proposed a master plan — land use, environmental remediation / restoration, reconstruction schedule — that makes any sense. Perhaps this whole episode will lead the folks of Louisiana to exercise greater care in whom they elect. I hope that those capable leaders the Pelican State must have will see that the old ways are gone and that it’s time for them to stand up for the good of the citizenry.
New Orleans will regain its glory when competent leadership is at the reins.
Uh oh, ennui is setting in again. Must be espresso time.
Mike C. – Just a few days ago an entire village was buried in the Phillipines after a mudslide. 1500 villagers buried alive. Now, we know what will happen next. The survivors will begin to rebuild the village on the same spot at the bottom of a mud mountain. Crazy, yes. Now we have New Orleans, 9 to 13 feet below sea level and lake level. Destroyed by a flood. But, the NO villagers want to rebuild on the same spot. Are we as backward and ignorant of the laws of nature as our Philippino friends?
The other beaut is installing mobile homes in the direct line of future hurricanes. Some of these structures cannot withstand a 40 mph wind gust. Yet, our “spend the money wisely” government will move the trailers right into these zones knowing that this is asking for a new disaster. What ever happened to common sense? The topper has to be FEMA in the aftermath of Katrina ordered up hundreds of trucks filled with ice. They were unable to distribute all of the ice but the trucks were kept in the vicinity with their engines running and refrigeration on to preserve the ice for at least a month. The companies were paid $25 an hour plus motel expenses etc for the drivers around the clock during all of this time. Finally, FEMA sent the trucks, at our expense of course, to Maine. The ice was then unloaded and is now in storage, again at our expense, and just might get used someday. For the eskimos, maybe?
Herb, Liberals use the racist and bigot labels to the point where it has gotten plain silly. Chief Justice Roberts was a bigot because 25 years ago he used the word “amigo” in referring to a Mexican. This from Chuckie Schumer. Alito, also a bigot, although no one could ever figure out why, but, hey, it made the nightly news and would have stuck but for Lindsay Graham. I find that when a liberal cannot debate ideas with facts, soon the racist and bigot name-calling will follow. Then we have Oprah. A few months back she went into a deluxe French designer shop that services by appointment. They also were at closing time. They told her she could not shop that day. Guess what, you guessed it, the store owners were immediately racists. Real surprise there. I think most of us are very tired of the race baiters but they are everywhere. Sports team names cannot refer to a race or ethnic group now. Wonder why the Irish aren’t complaining about the Celtics? We will need to get the race police gestapo on that one immediately. Does anyone remember Havlicek, Russell, Cousy, Sanders, Sam and KC Jones and the gang. See Celtics’s Site! A great team of black and white working together to win. No finger pointing, no whining, just do your thing and win.
Race is still a significant factor, and racism still exists. It’s more than just using racially pejorative language. Race and class are closely related. I’ll write more on this subject later.
Mary the Red is still griping about how The South gets more federal dollars than some rich Yankee states.
The main reason is that the South has lots of poor people who bought into the liberal message of feeling like a victim and being helpless. I thought liberals wanted to support those people. I guess not.
Dave, the reason Alito is believed to be a bigot is that he joined an organization whose sole purpose was to support the exclusion of more qualified women and African American appliants to Princeton in favor of less qualified white male applicants.
This is from “The Nation,” the December 12, 2005 issue:
**********************************************Launched in 1972, the year Alito graduated, CAP had an innocuous-sounding name that disguised a less benign agenda, which included preventing women and minorities from entering an institution that had long been a bastion of white male privilege. In a 1973 article in Prospect, a magazine CAP published, Shelby Cullom Davis, one of its founders, harked back to the days when a gathering of Princeton alumni consisted of “a body of men, relatively homogeneous in interests and backgrounds.” Lamented Cullom Davis: “I cannot envisage a similar happening in the future with an undergraduate student population of approximately 40% women and minorities, such as the Administration has proposed.” Another article published that same year bemoaned the fact that “the makeup of the Princeton student body has changed drastically for the worse” in recent years–Princeton had begun admitting women in 1969–and wondered aloud what might happen if the university adopted a “sex-blind” policy “removing limits on the number of women.” In an unsuccessful effort to forestall this frightening development, the executive committee of CAP published a statement in December 1973 that affirmed unequivocally, “Concerned Alumni of Princeton opposes adoption of a sex-blind admission policy.”
*******************************************
In other words, the Concerned Alumni of Princeton bitterly opposed basing admission solely on merit without regard to gender. They favored putting limits on the number of women, whether or not those women were more qualified. The fact that Huckleberry Graham made a conclusory statement that Alito wasn’t a bigot doesn’t mean anything. The fact is that Alito joined an organization whose sole purpose was to promote an agenda based on bigotry. If he wasn’t a bigot, why did he participate in the promotion of bigotry?
Lee, why is it that the conservative states are full of people who have “bought into the liberal message,” and that’s why the conservative states have to depend on handouts from their liberal neighbors? If the liberal message is one of dependency, why do the liberal states have enough money to pay not only their own share of federal taxes, but yours too?
No, the reason the conservative states are the freeloader states is that the citizens of the conservative states have bought into the conservative message – namely, that it’s OK to be ignorant, shiftless, and dependent, so long as you strut around claiming to be self-sufficient and attack the liberals who pay for the handouts that keep you alive.
Now, I don’t mind having to pay a little extra to keep my fellow Americans from starving to death. What I do mind is the ingratitude. If you can’t show sufficient industry and initiative to support yourself without handouts, how about at least refraining from attacking the people whose industry and initiative supports themselves and you too?
Dave:
Mary is of course mistaken with Alito and the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a group of alumni disturbed that in the rush to admit minorities and women to a formerly all-male institution, standards would be lowered. In an attempt to lessen the perception of the school’s elite status and increase the diversity of its student population, Princeton’s administration did what others in its situation usually do and gave extra credits to females and black and brown males to compensate for lower academic and standardized test scores. Non-African-American and Non-Hispanic males had to meet more rigorous standards to be admitted. Heck, even Mary might have qualified for admission.
The Nation article Mary excerpt is thus misleading, on purpose. Moreover, Alito’s says he supported CAP’s efforts to stop attempts to remove ROTC from the campus.
In 1983 the CAP magazine Prospect did indeed publish an essay titled “In Defense of Elitism” (link to PDF file) which contained the following:
The essay, by H. W. Crocker III, now an editor for Regnery Books, was a satire was a satire according to Dinesh D’Souza, the Prospect‘s editor at the time. Even the excerpt above – read by Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Chappaquiddick) during the Alito hearings — smacks of satire, no? Yes!
By the way, Mr. D’Souza, enfant terrible of the Reagan revolution, is not a white male as you can see from the pictures on his website.
You will recall too that when CAP’s records were opened to the Senate Committee, no smoking gun was found, there were no records about Alito whatsoever.
As for Mary’s ramblings about how SC gets more in federal revenues that it pays out, she’s not open to reason, facts, or argument. I’ve tried. I’ve pointed out that SC has proportionately more federal / military employees, that there are proportionately more retirees collecting SS retirement benefits, that those NE states with higher median incomes pay proportionately more federal income tax thanks to the progression nature of that tax. SC also has more military bases and federal thingies like that in Aiken. I even did some math for her, but don’t have the time to find it now. So I have given up. With the tone and content of her comments, she reminds me of a
rather famous female journalist.
She’s called me retarded enough that I’ve started wearing a bib to catch the drool. I guess I’m slow to take a hint…
Mike, you can pretend all you want that CAP was set up to oppose affirmative action, but the facts remain as they are:
“In an unsuccessful effort to forestall this frightening development, the executive committee of CAP published a statement in December 1973 that affirmed unequivocally, “Concerned Alumni of Princeton opposes adoption of a sex-blind admission policy.”
Once again, slowly, so you can attempt to understand it.
Concerned.
Alumni.
Of.
Princeton.
Opposes.
The.
Adoption.
Of.
A.
Sex.
Blind.
Admission.
Policy.
Nothing to do with affirmative action. Everything to do with blocking the admission of more qualified women in favor of less qualified white men.
As for Alito’s claim that didn’t remember joining CAP, but remembered that the reason he joined was to protest opposition to ROTC, I think we can pretty much dismiss that as a lie, on the ground that people who don’t remember doing something also don’t remember why they did it.
You have not “pointed out” anything tending to refute my contention that South Carolina receives more federal money than it pays in taxes because its citizens are dependent on handouts for their survival. You have made various unsupported claims, but you have not “pointed out” anything.
And I have invited you to approach it another way, and you have declined. Let me reiterate it for you. If South Carolina were to vanish tomorrow, would that be
(a) an economic benefit to the rest of the United States, or
(b) an economic detriment
?
I don’t think any honest person will deny that the ansewr is (a).
Mary, let me ask you a question. If you take a poll in America asking people if they would prefer to live or vacation in South Carolina or Massachusetts, which state would win? Get a life if you answered Massachusetts.
The Hating Left spent a week venting about the “Concerned Alumni of Princeton”, before doing the basic background research to learn that the article they were quoting was written as SATIRE. Then they quietly dropped the subject, but their dumb followers persist in ranting about their own ignorance.
More bad news, Mary: I am working to shut down a union factory in Massachusetts and move production to a new one in Columbia – 350 jobs. As unfriendly as SC is to business, Massachusetts is worse.
Lee, it’s hard to imagine anybody more confident in what he thinks he knows, yet more ignorant, than Mike C., but if there is such a person, it is you. No wonder you have been dependent on federal handouts from the time you were born until now.
The article you are on about was from 1983; I have never said anything about it. The statement I referred to was from 1973. If you weren’t so shiftless, you might have summoned up the initiative to actually look at the date I referred to, but of course, if you weren’t so shiftless, I wouldn’t have to pay money toward the handouts that keep you from starving.
Hmmm, so a factory in Massachusetts, unemployment rate 4.9%, is moving to South Carolina, unemployment rate 7.0%? I’m sure the citizens of Massachusetts will manage to survive somehow.
What are the factory owners going to do when the customers start complaining about the decline in quality of the goods?
Well Mary, I’ve never subscribed to a blind sex policy – I like to see what’s going on.
But as for The Nation article, is it not quite apparent that the author has an agenda and pursues it with both alacrity and stupidity? The author’s disdain is evident even when quoting from the allegedly offensive CAP publication Prospect:
Having homosexuals demand the “right to bear children” is a joke, a parallel “the right to bear arms.” Sheesh!
What Princeton was after was a 40% female, minority component ASAP. The only way to do that was to lower admission standards by giving extra credit for not having white skin or the male member. That’s the issue behind the sex-blind statement.
I’ve posted boatloads to refute your contention that South Carolina receives more federal money than it pays in taxes because its citizens are dependent on handouts for their survival. You choose to ignore it, so I have to regard you as a troll.
As for you offensive hypothetical question “If South Carolina were to vanish tomorrow, would that be (a) an economic benefit to the rest of the United States, or (b) an economic detriment,” I could pose the question substituting “Mary Rosh” for “South Carolina.” The difference would be that the former will at some point vanish while the latter will not, and that’s not hypothetical .
Should you mean by your hypothetical “If South Carolina were to secede from the Union tomorrow,” I’d point out that the state did try, but the move was not successful thanks to the effort of some guy named Abe. So ist das Leben, nicht wahr?
I was going to post here and try to make a thoughtful response to Brad Warthen’s appalling column. Then I saw the equally appalling comments by most of his blog readers and I realized that the bulk of the blog’s readership are just as much a bunch of bigoted troglodytes as Brad is. So, suffice it to say, you all deserve each other, and I guess the folks going through the ravages of Katrina have only to thank God that you people aren’t in charge of the recovery. You people make Bush and Rumsfeld look sensitive and caring. God help Brad Warthen and the readers of The State and this blog.
Tina –
If my house, if my neighborhood is devastated, it’s up to me any my homies to get it right. There may be offers of help; we’ll welcome all who want to chip in. The local, state, and federal gummints may make funds available; we’ll grab what we can.
But rebuilding the neighborhood is up to us. Some folks will not be up to it and may move elsewhere. Maybe somebody climbs to the top of the hills and announces “I’ve got a better idea. Hear me out, here’s my plan.” We may listen and follow, or we may dig one more hole and stick him in it. But it’s really up to us, the locals, to re-build.
Use your brain as well as your heart. The incentives are clearly for local politicians to direct any aid to where it will benefit them and their supporters. As I noted earlier, there’s no master plan for reconstruction of The Big Easy. The basic elements are:
Rome was not built in a day, neither was Syracuse. Nyuk, nyuk. nyuk.
From 1990 to 2000 SC population grew by 15.5% and Mass. grew by 5%. Since 2000, it has gotten worse for Mass. People are abandoning the liberal mess as they have grown weary of paying Tedddy’s bar bills and Barney Frank’s page boy motel bills. Mary, you just stay right there and keep your liberal friends with you. But, keep on sending all that tax money to SC, we can use it.
The unions in MA are in denial of reality just like Red Mary, wanting benefits and high wages from employers with no profits.
Tina,
I much appreciate your contribution. Please stay involved because it is important for you to have a voice. Believe me, I understand where you are coming from.
Mike, you say this:
“What Princeton was after was a 40% female, minority component ASAP. The only way to do that was to lower admission standards by giving extra credit for not having white skin or the male member. That’s the issue behind the sex-blind statement.”
As I said, except for possibly Lee, there is no other person more ignorant, yet more confident in his perception of his own knowledge, than you.
Opposition to a sex-blind policy doesn’t mean opposition to favoring applicants based on their gender. That’s obvious from a plain understanding of the meaning of the words. A sex-blind policy means making admission decisions without regard to gender, and opposition to a sex-blind policy means opposing the making of admission decisions without regard to gender. You can pretend as much as you want that opposing a sex-blind policy is the opposite of what it is, but in doing so you simply emphasize your own dishonesty.
The reason, of course, that CAP opposed a sex-blind policy, is this:
“In a 1973 article in Prospect, a magazine CAP published, Shelby Cullom Davis, one of its founders, harked back to the days when a gathering of Princeton alumni consisted of “a body of men, relatively homogeneous in interests and backgrounds.”
People don’t join the KKK just because they like the uniforms, and Alito didn’t join an organization founded to promote bigotry without sharing its views.
Again, you have indeed posted many claims purpoorting to refute my contention that the excess federal expenditures received by South Carolinians constitute handouts, they don’t constitute proof or evidence. My ignoring your false claims and specious reasoning doesn’t make me a troll, either. This is a typical modus operandi among conservatives. You seek to short-circuit the argument by casting counterarguments as outside of acceptable discourse. That keeps you from admitting that you’ve lost the argument.
Again, would the United States benefit or suffer economically if South Carolina vanished tomorrow? You can call the question “offensive” and “hypothetical” all you want; that way you can avoid answering it.
If I were to vanish, the United States would suffer, economically at least. Coming from a liberal state, I pay more in federal taxes than I receive in federal services.
Lee, if it’s not economically feasible to employ people in Massachusetts, why is the unemployment rate in Massachusetts 4.9% while the unemployment rate in South Carolina is 7%?
Massachusetts will continue to have lower unemployment rates, as the workers move South.
Mary is still ranting over a SATIRE article written 30 years ago, which Judge Alito never even read, much less wrote or endorsed.
Such is what passes for liberal debate.
“Lick my Decals Off Baby”
Don Van Vliet
Lee, as I’ve explained, I have never said anything about the so-called “satire” article; what I am pointing to is an explicit statement of the viewpoint of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton – namely, that they opposed a policy that viewed applicants based solely on their qualifications, without regard to gender.
Your inability to comprehend this simple fact helps to explain why unemployment in Massachusetts is so much lower than in South Carolina, even though wages are higher in Massachusetts. The quality of the labor force in South Carolina is inferior to that in Massachusetts, so that even the lower wages accepted by South Carolinians aren’t enough to persuade employers to accept the lower quality of work.
Imagine how much worse things would be in South Carolina if not for the flood of federal subsidies helping to finance make-work jobs.
Mary, you are just repeating what you heard on TV from the 93% of “journalists” who admitted to voting for Clinton.
If you really care about what someone thought 30 years ago, how about:
* Clinton’s letter about “loathing the military”
* Hillary’s working for the attorneys of the Communist Party USA in defending murderers
* Al Gore’s doping and drinking which bounced him out of law school and divinity school
* John Kerry’s anti-war group being revealed as a puppet of the KGB
So, Lee, from your attempt to change the subject, I take it that:
You admit that the statement I quoted was in fact what I described, a statement favoring a policy of excluding more qualified women and minority applicants in favor of less qualified white male applicants?
You admit that the statement I quoted didn’t have anything to do with the so-called “satire” article, and you were just too lazy, shiftless, and stupid to comprehend that fact until I pointed it out repeatedly?
You admit that is this same laziness, shiftlessness, and stupidity that has led you to be dependent on federal handouts from the day you were born up until now?
Apparently you missed the author of that satire article coming forward on television to explain it. By the way, the author is aa prominent African-American.
Lee, what the author of the so-called “satire” article says about it, and whether or not he was committing perjury when he said it, is totally irrelevant, because the statement I quoted does not come from that so-called “satire” article, and does not have anything to do with it.
Again, the same combination of laziness, shiftlessness, and stupidity that causes you to fail to recognize that fact is the same combination of laziness, shiftlessness, and stupidity that has led you to depend on handouts for your survival from the day you were born until now.
And we once again see demonstrated some of the reasons why employers would rather hire people from Massachusetts at higher wages than people from South Carolina at lower wages.
Mary, Since you intentionally avoided answering my question about where people would rather live, that leads me to believe you know the answer is truly SC. So the next question is when do you plan on becoming part of the brain drain out of your beloved Massachusetts? And with your keen interest in SC, our problem is you plan to come here.
Dave, I basically didn’t pay attention to your question because it seemed to me to be nothing but meaningless noise – your typical technique of responding to a factual analysis by interposing a counterargument that you (in your majestic stupidity and ignornance) somehow “know” to be true.
But if you insist, the answers to these four questions can be analyzed to yield the answer to your question:
1. How much does it cost to live in Massachusetts?
2. How much does it cost to live in South Carolina?
3. How many people live in Massachusetts?
4. How many people live in South Carolina?
If the unemployed in SC moved to MA, would they still be unemployed? Why?
Mary, you can post all you want about the past. Do you deny the future population trends and statistics? Simply put, Mass. is trending to a population loss while SC is growing at a rapid pace. People must live near industry to survive, but as Lee has pointed out, industries are vacating Mass. Can you say Polaroid, for example?
By the way, before you cite others for stupidity, learn how to spell “ignorance”. You are a bizarre minded person who believes that you can win intellectual debate (well, somewhat intellectual) by calling names and insulting. I would conjecture that you were raised in a home where one or more of your parents continually attacked your self esteem. That’s too bad but as an adult you need to get over it.
So Dave, the answer to my question essentially yield the information that it costs much more to live in Massachusetts than in South Carolina, yet many more people live in Massachusetts than in South Carolina? And this is true even though people in Massachusetts pay both their own federal taxes and additional taxes needed to finance the handouts that keep South Carolinians from starving to death? Is that about right?
And once again we see you complaining about other people using insults, when you do not hesitate to rain abuse on the people whose taxes pay for the handouts you rely on to keep you from starving, questioning their patriotism at every turn, and even having the temerity to call them leeches(!) How can people be leeches when THEY pay for YOUR handouts? Pay your OWN WAY before you even think about complaining about someone else’s supposed lack of contribution.
As for Lee, he doesn’t “point out” anything. He makes plenty of assertions, but an assertion made by a crazy person doesn’t constitute “pointing something out.”
If industries are vacating Massachusetts, HOW is it that the unemployment rate in Massachusetts is 4.9% and that of South Carolina is 7.0%?
If the smart workers leave Taxachusetts fast enough, they could get the unemployment rate even lower…for a while.
How much money would you give the corrupt Democrats of Louisiana to rebuild New Orleans?
How much do you think they would skim off the projects?
Mary, The COLA is so high in Mass. that anyone who is unemployed for any length of time bails from the state. Where do they go, south of course, where the sun always shines and one can afford to survive on much lower income. A friend called me today from Boston. He closes on a house in Charlotte in about a month for less than what someone just paid for a parking space in Boston today, $185,000. You can take Boston and all of Mass. for that matter and keep it. My friend is evacuating the liberal wasteland as soon as he can. This is part of why SC is growing and Mass. is in a perpetual decline.
So Dave, what you’re telling me is:
1. People are willing to pay much more to live in Massachusetts than they are to live in South Carolina.
2. People in Massachusetts are so much more valuable as workers than people in South Carolina that they are able to command much higher wages.
And to you, these facts reflect BADLY on Massachusetts?
And let’s not forget the other point you made:
3. People who cannot support themselves without relying on handouts are much more likely to live in South Carolina than in Massachusetts.
That’s what I’ve been saying all along.
If people were WILLING to pay more taxes, the state of MA wouldn’t need armed police to collect the money.
Mary has such animosity towards any state which votes against the Kerrys, Gores and Clintons that she assumes we hate Yankees. We don’t. We realize that their prosperity was due to hard work and productivity. Unfortunately, many of them forgot that they cannot coast on the previous generation.
Lee, I never said anything about taxes. I was referring to the overall cost of living, which is mainly a result of housing costs, which are mainly driven by market forces. Market forces cause Massachusetts to be a much more expensive place than South Carolina to live, because people are willing to pay a lot more to live there than they are to live in South Carolina. Fortunately, their education, industry and initiative, as you note, allows them to command the wages needed to live in Massachusetts.
The converse of what you said is also true. Just as the prosperity of Massachusetts is due to the initiative and industry of its citizens, the poverty of South Carolina is due to the shiftlessness of its citizens.
Mary, you are dogmatic about your thoughts to the point of exhaustion, but you continually deny the obvious. With industry and population trending continually down in Mass. you have to see that the future is ominous for the state overall. Less people to pay taxes, less people to pay pension obligations, means higher taxes and costs for those left. A vicious cycle of failure for the liberal wasteland of Kennedy, Kerry, Frank, and you. Enjoy it.
Mary provides a good reminder of the bigotry that has come to define “Yankee liberal”.
Myths and lies about Hurricane Katrina
The latest Popular Mechanics has an article about some of the things that
happened. They sent in a team to research what really happened and here are some
of their findings.
myth:
this is a once in a lifetime event
reality:
By the time Katrina hit NO, it was only a mid-sized hurricane. It was smaller than either Rita or Wilma and only a fraction of the size of Andrew.
Camille, which followed almost the same path in ’69, had winds 75 mph higher than
Katrina. The problem with Katrina was the wide size and direction which caused a
higher surge that topped some levees.
myth: the levees broke because they weren’t made to specs.
reality:
The collapsed levee sections recovered from the mud were up to specs.
Part of the collapse was because 25′ water poured over the tops and washed out the
backsides of the footings. A couple of collapsed sections were found to be up to
specs but the cause of collapse isn’t yet known. No evidence of malfeasance has
been found (in spite of what certain black leaders have been saying, there’s no
evidence that Bush dynamited the levees to hurt blacks).
myth: shootings, rapes, bodies stacked in freezers, looters shooting at aircraft,
etc.
reality:
almost none of this was found to be true. Seems that some overzealous
reporters were reporting rumors as truth without checking out the facts.
myth: “…one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in US
history” (Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, LA)
reality: there were 100,000 rescue people on the scene within 3 days of landfall.
The evacuation plan moved 1.2 million people out of NO in 38 hrs., half the time
in the original estimates. The large majority of those left didn’t want to leave
for various reasons. The biggest hitch was that FEMA is not designed to be a 1st
responder. That’s up to the local and state governments with FEMA being there as a
backup. The huge numbers who were evacuated were due to state and local efforts.
Likewise, those who didn’t leave were the responsibility of the local government
and it was unable to handle it.
myth:
we will rebuild bigger and better than ever (Haley Barbour, governor of MS)
reality:
for years the fed government has been subsidizing the people for flood
insurance. For example, the tourist town of Dauphin Island, AL has been hit an
average of every 4 years for 25 years. They’ve collected $21 mill in taxpayer
money repairing their flood damaged homes over those years but they keep
rebuilding. Private insurers would refuse to cover them but the feds do…on
taxpayers money. It’s the same in many places along the gulf coast. They will
rebuild with our money but in all probability, they’ll rebuild in the same
vulnerable places and with the same vulnerable construction. It won’t be bigger
and better but rather the same old thing…and we’ll pay again in a few years.
Lee, If a Democrat had been president while Katrina hit, the media would have been praising the extraordinary effort of the federal government. It is really and truly sick how a natural disaster can be politicized by idiots posing as journalists. The left is not at all interested in your facts posted above. Never were and never will be. When the WTC was first bombed in 93, Clinton never even visited the site. There wasn’t a peep of complaint over that. Bush was castigated for not flying into the middle of the storm to be the Prez hero.
The last thing Clinton and his media pals wanted was a picture of him in the ruins of his failure to stop Bin Laden’s first attack on U.S. soil.
Remember, his campaign media handler became head of CNN soon after that fiasco.
Clinton hid in his office for most of his screw-ups, from Waco, to Somalia, to the WTC, Haiti riots, USS Cole bombing.
Dave, the obvious facts, based on market choices, are:
1. Massachusetts workers are much more valuable than South Carolina workers.
2. Living in Massachusetts is much more desirable than living in South Carolina.
Now, you may engage in idle, specious speculation about some long-distant “ominous future” for Massachusetts. What’s clear, though, is that South Carolina faces an ominous present. It positions itself as a haven for employers who want an uneducated, compliant, low wage work force, but the problem is that if you market yourself based on cheapness rather than quality, there will always be someone cheaper. South Carolina workers may be cheaper than Massachusetts workers, but that cheapness carries with it a significantly lower quality, too. Slave workers in China are even cheaper than South Carolina workers, but the quality of the work they provide is not that much worse, if it is worse at all.
So you can sit and do your specious analysis all you want, and talk about the “grim future” faced by Massachusetts. The people of Massachusetts will just have to face the future bravely, bolstered by their low unemployment rate, their high wages, and their valuable homes.
When I move some of those Yankee workers down South to a modern factory, what makes you think they will suddenly become slovenly and unproductive?
The heat and humidity
Mary, you think “cheap” doesn’t work. You haven’t looked at Wal-Mart’s sales dollars lately I assume. The market demand flows to less expensive like water to low ground.
Bill, I like that. But there is always the all-mighty air conditioning.. thank goodness.
Air-conditioning being, of course, the one development of the past half-century that did the most to level the playing field for the South in economic development — or at least, helped put us in the game. While we have advantages of climate (and air-conditioning fixes the only objectionable thing about our climate), we still have disadvantages in terms of human capital.
Once we invest what is necessary to better educate all our population, it is hard to imagine WHAT would keep industry, high-tech or otherwise, in the North.
Dave, I’m not making arguments about whether “cheap” does or doesn’t work based on some sort of theory; I’m making observations about what is REALLY TRUE. The facts are that people in Massachusetts earn much more than people in South Carolina, yet the unemployment rate in Masschusetts is under 5%, versus an unemployment rate in South Carolina of 7%.
I do not deny that low income people are willing to buy low-quality goods in Wal-marts low-quality stores, staffed by low-quality employees. That doesn’t alter the fact that employers seem not to be as willing to employ South Carolina’s low-cost, low-quality workers as they are to employ the higher-cost, higher-quality workers of Massachusetts.
Mary, the low cost, low quality workers you refer to in SC are mostly black, semi-illiterate people. These are not nuclear engineers in SC out of work. If you had any sense of justice, you would want the selfish liberals in Mass. to give even more money to SC, correct? Where is your sense of compassion? It’s all about how much money you want to retain in your greedy, liberal, bloodsucking home state. Wow, I feel better now.
I say again, can’t we all just get along?
Frank Zappa said it best:”People is dumb all over”.South Carolinians are tough.What I like most about this state and city,I put in a slogan(rejected by the mayor):”Columbia.No Attitude Required.”
I find the term “human capital” to not only be an oxymoron, but a dehumanizing one.
I want liberals like Brad Warthen to tell us how much money it will take to bring every sort of student up to whatever as-yet-undefined standard he thinks they should meet.
He won’t, because none of these big spenders put any thought into the details of education. They operate on faith that spending more money will fix anything. Every time they have their way, they fail to produce results.
America will have even higher numbers of unemployable people until it
* stigmatizes bastardy and eliminates children born without parents
* prevents the lowest intellect people from having the highest birth rates
* stops letting the world’s most backward people select themselves as immigrants
Without fixing those huge sources of people who cannot be educated to even minimal levels, no amount of money spent on education can have much effect on society.
PARENTS GET FINAL LOOK AT PLANS FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS RESTORATION/REBUILDING
The School Facilities Master Plan for all public schools in New Orleans
reaches a final and direct involvement by parents and friends of the
system beginning this weekend with the first of ten citywide meetings
scheduled over the next two weeks.
Considered as one of the most significant of undertakings by the
State Department of Education, the Recovery School District and the
Orleans Parish School Board, the Master Plan is designed to serve
as a blueprint to guide future school renovations and new construction
for the entire system as it recovers from the ravages of Hurricane
Katrina.
As conceived, the Master Plan is scheduled for completion in May of
this year, with a formal recommendation submitted to Superintendent of
Education Paul Pastorek for final approval and leading to the work of
restoration and rebuilding of all damaged school properties as well
as recommendations for creating new schools. Where necessary,
the demolition of those buildings which cannot be salvaged will also
be part of the Plan.
The ten meetings are the last opportunity for parents and friends of
the system to join in the planning process. Constance Caruso,
Director of Planning for the Recovery School District, calls the work
of the Master Plan as “historic,” with its determination to involve
parental attitudes and concerns for neighborhood schools. “What
we are about, literally, is the building of an entirely new school
system,” Ms Caruso stated. “Katrina severely damaged some of
our schools,” she added, “but not our determination to gain the
thinking of those who will be the direct beneficiaries of our work ….
the children through their parents.”
The ten meetings are being conducted across the entire geographic
expanse of Orleans Parish. Parents are urged to attend the meeting
closest to their child’s school. The first two meetings are scheduled
for this weekend and both are in Algiers. On Saturday morning,
February 165, parents and friends of the Westbank High Schools
will gather at the O.Perry Walker campus, at l0AM. Then, on Monday,
February 18, parents and friends of Westbank elementary schools
will gather at 6PM at the Habans Elementary School campus.
The full schedule for the remaining eight meetings is as follows:
Tuesday, February 19, 6PM, at the M.L.K. Charter School, 1617
Caffin Avenue;
Thursday, February 21, 6PM, at Wicker Elementary School, 2011
Bienville Street.
Saturday, February 23, 10AM, parents of Eastbank High Schools
will meet at John McDonogh High School, 2436 Esplanade Ave.
Monday, February 25, 6PM, at the Andrew Jackson Elementary
School, 1400 Camp Street.
Tuesday, February 26, 6pm, at McNair Elementary School, 1607
South Carrollton Avenue.
Thursday, February 28, 6PM, Nelson Elementary School, 3121
St. Bernard Avenue.
Monday, March 3, 6PM, at Capdau-UNO Charter School, 3821
Franklin Avenue.
Tuesday, March 4, 6PM, Village de l’Est Elementary School, 5100
Cannes Street.
Further information can be obtained at http://www.nolapublicschools.net.