Speechless
I feel like I’m falling down on the job here with fewer postings, but I do, in fact, find myself speechless in the face of the hurricane disaster. It is catastrophic in so many ways: the loss of a major American city; the failure, on so many levels, of the government response; the lawlessness that has broken out; the sheer helplessness of a natural disaster of this magnitude. And then there is heartbreaking empathy for people who, today at least, have NO personal control in their lives.
If there is anyone out there today who still thinks a large federal government is a good idea – who thinks that government programs are the cures to our problems – I hope that you have the courage to rethink your position. FEMA is being led by a political appointee with no “disaster” experience. That doesn’t surprise me – but neither am I surprised that FEMA’s response to this disaster has been a disaster itself. When that is the way the government operates, we can’t really expect much. You could go on forever listing the other reasons that this mess is happening: “Private” money isn’t there because a huge percentage of our personal incomes are sucked up in taxes. “Public” money (all those taxes) isn’t there because we are sending it all to Israel and to corrupt South American and African regimes, and because we diverted it to ill-advised and hopeless strategies to “fight the war” on terror and drugs. In spite of trillions of dollars spent on “help” programs like welfare, Head Start, after-school care, Sesame Street and all the rest, we have countless numbers of people mired in poverty because of their inability to make good choices and delay gratification in order to make preparations for success. Individual accountability is what has been lost from all that “help.” What have we gained? We gained a bunch of people with no means to help themselves.
The old joke about “I’m from the government; I’m here to help” isn’t so funny.
OK – maybe I wasn’t speechless after all.
posted by Cathy @ 10:28 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Girlfriend, you hit so many of my buttons with this one, but I will try to restrain myself and only respond intelligently to one or two.
My favorite government annoyance - HEAD START DOESN'T WORK! Study after study after study has shown that any gains achieved with Head Start are erased by the 3rd grade. Why do we keep throwing away good money on this program? It's a "feel good" program designed to help the poor and underprivileged (translate, minority). Politically, it is difficult to cut a program like this without being dubbed a racist. My idea? Let's figure out what does work and try that. What does work? Study after study after study has shown that parental involvement at home is the key to a child's success in school. Forget NCLB (there's a rant about that on my blog if you want to go there), forget Head Start, forget special programs and rules and teachers, parents have to actually parent their children. I know, I know, it's a concept foreign to many of them (not only the poor and underprivelaged, I might add). If we, as a society, are really going to try to fix the problem, then we have to change the behavior that is actually causing the problem. I am really tired of watching my tax dollars be spent on crap because it's "politically correct".
And when was FEMA moved under Homeland Security(HS)? HS has got to be the most beauracratically over-bloated agency in existence. I didn't realize FEMA had been moved until Katrina. No wonder they can't get anything done.
And as a side note, Rush Limbaugh was ranting on his show the other day, and couldn't understand why all those people who didn't evacuate the city didn't own cars. What an idiot. I usually don't resort to name calling, but get real. First, as anyone who's lived in a real city knows, often a car is an unneccessary expense. They have public transportation in cities. Second, these people were poor...cars are not a purchase they are likely to make. These people should have been evacuated, the government really fell down on the job here.
Ok, I could go on and on and on, if you've visited my blog you know this. Enough said for now.
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