HURRICANE KATRINA
Wednesday, October 5, 2005.
Up and out to work today on time. Hey! Two days in a row! This is starting to be regular... We actually got internet access at work today. One day at a time...
The dentist in my office building isn't coming back. Evidently he rolled a truck up a few days after the storm, told my boss that he can't live like this, took all his stuff and bailed. Another dentist that got flooded out moved right in.
Entergy called me today and talked to my about my butchered tree. The sum total of the discussion was, "Too damn bad.", but he did offer to remove the tree. I told him to leave it. I'm going to write a nice long letter to Entergy at some point. I'm really not happy.
When I got home today, I discovered that the parish had actually picked up ALL my garbage! I was totally amazed! They didn't pick up the tree branches yet, but the garbage was the big deal. Unfortunately, they also took all three of my garbage cans. Crud. Now I'll have to go buy new garbage cans...
Sometimes I wish people wouldn't help so much. Speaking of which, I found this particularly amusing today:
Jesse Jackson plans to bus residents back to N.O. to help in cleanup
02:43 PM CDT on Wednesday, October 5, 2005
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, decrying what he claims is
a lack of local labor taking part in hurricane cleanup efforts, said
Wednesday he plans to bus evacuated residents back to the city. That's funny. I don't recall that he actually helped EVACUATE
anybody in his fancy bus when he was down here right after the storm. Jackson said the federal response to the hurricane
has enabled large government contractors to win no-bid contracts that could
instead be serviced by local residents who now are unemployed and living in
shelters around the country. Well, he's got that right at least... "We're talking about cleanup, debris removal,
driving trucks, driving bulldozers -- these are skills within the realm of
people who are being victimized by this crisis," he said. So he thinks the victims are only construction workers? Jackson said emergency workers and contractors have
inundated the city, and displaced residents living on military bases and in
hotels around the nation could use similar accommodations in and around
their native city. Well, as the story goes, one of the big contractors set up tables at some
of the shelters in Baton Rouge and other places and advertised that they had
3000 jobs for people who wanted to come back to the city and work. How
many signed up? THREE! I don't think Mr. Jackson is going to get
much response... "If they can stay in hotels in Detroit, they
can stay in hotels in downtown New Orleans," Jackson said in telephone
call from California, a day after visiting the storm-struck Gulf Coast. Um...dood...have you noticed that the hotels in downtown New Orleans
aren't operational yet?
This is exactly the kind of thing that bugs me. I mean, has this worthless democrat ever really done anything for anybody?
Oh! That reminds me. Jersey cops went home. http://tinyurl.com/dje3t
Anyway, what's really pissing me off about all of this is that this isn't something new. It's not like this has never happened before. On 9/27 I posed a blog entry about this, but it's becoming really apparent that people's attitudes towards government has really changed. I think 9-11 might have something to do with it. We live in an age of fear. Fear that the government encourages. We're looking for a hero, but there doesn't seem to be anyone in authority to take responsibility and provide some leadership. Even worse, a lot of people are standing around with their hands out asking, "What is the Federal Government going to do for me?"
Nobody seems to be asking, "What are we going to do for ourselves?"
From the beginning, we've had little leadership. We even had a total loss of authority for awhile. The mayor panicked, the governor was smoking valium or something, and the feds were sitting on their hands. Nobody bothered to take responsibility or provide any leadership until the U.S. Military showed up. Everyone was happy to blame everyone else, but nobody wanted to actually take responsibility.
Even though NOBODY YET has taken any real responsibility or provided any real leadership, we're seeing plenty of authority. Cops confiscating legal firearms. People being denied access to their homes and property. Curfews. None of which really helps. The only thing that's going to help is for the government to stop slowing us down and let us get in and put our lives back together so that we can start paying taxes again.
Government, I think, does have a duty in a disaster. Maintaining peace and security is probably chief among those. That needs to be done reasonably, though, and with some responsibility. We haven't seen that in Orleans for sure. It was just decided one day that nobody could stay. Everybody had to get out. Why? What sense does that make? What good does it do? If a person has a dry house, food, water, and a means to provide their own security, why should some authority demand that he or she leave?
People are losing sight of the balance between the rights of the individual and the needs of the state. We've given up our PERSONAL responsibility to the less satisfactory authority of government, and I'm not sure why we think that's a better idea.
Like Gerald Ford said; "The government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." That's not just about property, that's about personal freedom too. Anybody remember the phrase, 'Manifest Destiny'?
The people all sitting around wondering what the government is going to do for them need to wake up. If the government cannot distinguish between authority and responsibility, we need to start taking responsibility for ourselves. They're actually bussing Mexican immigrants in to do cleanup work. We could be doing this ourselves IF THE CITY WOULD LET US BACK IN! I think we'd be a LOT better off without some of this government 'help'. Give us our FEMA checks, and get the hell out of the way. This is our town. We'll clean it up. We don't need Mexicans or Yankees in here trying to have a piece of the pie. (Not that I have anything against Mexicans, personally.)
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Pictures of the day:
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And while this has nothing to do with Hurricane Katrina, I thought it was cool:
