What we have just witnessed in the Hurricane Katrina event on the Gulf Coast is a disaster all right — a man-made disaster, and the question is: Who, or what, caused it?
Many in the chain-of-command of government, from New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, to Gov. Kathleen Blanco and all the way to President George Bush, as well as such folks as the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, have expressed their opinions of just what caused the chaos.
I would like to submit the theory that this monumental mess was not caused in the last seven days but occurred due to the effort, and lack thereof, of the last seven decades.
It is becoming increasingly clear that it was the complete and utter failure of the welfare state that is the root cause of the disaster. You only have to look at the response of the local city government to see where it started.
The local first response teams were nowhere to be found. Mayor Dagin and Gov. Blanco have to answer why they did not order the necessary police and National Guard personnel to immediately secure the city, which would have prevented the resulting looting, rapes and general lawlessness that followed.
We have just seen the results of the entitlement society looking toward and waiting for the federal government to “do something,” “fix it all” and “do it yesterday.” Well, this country was not founded on this philosophy, and it never has worked with positive results anywhere.
Where are the complaints relating to the total incompetence of the City of New Orleans’ failure to plan for the much-predicted flooding? All we see and hear on our biased media channels are the usual, race-baiting, vitriolic, un-founded theories and general Bush-blaming. I guess the Democrats still can’t get over the fact that they lost, and will continue to lose, as long as they stick to these non-constructive, bureaucratic-building tactics.
I think this country is smarter than this, and the situation is definitely improving. It seems like the improvement started with the military’s presence, did it not? This surely will anger the Democrats even more!
I just heard that the president is dispatching Vice President Dick Cheney to New Orleans to set up all the necessary Halliburton field offices. Hooray, and God bless the United States!
— Burt Smith, Camarillo
you are wrong, deluded, immoral, either ignorant or in denial.
the Katrina timeline plainly illustrates federal incompetence, and the number of people living in poverty has increased by a million over the last year. Which is due to Bush policy.