| A small and insignificant source of commentaries on what's going on in the world today. By Jozef Purdes. |
|
Departments Front page Random Ramblings The Luddite's View Hyde Park Propaganda'r'Us For Future Reference Archive
Recommended links (in no particular order)
Friends
Rate Me on BlogHop.com!
|
|
Katrina's blame game From the "Propaganda'r'Us" department Usually, I don't participate in blame games, and especially as they get old I tend to ignore them. Today, however, I came across an article where the author, a Michael Parenti blames free markets for the Katrina fiasco. This sounds like a pretty far-fetched thesis, and unfortunately the arguments aren't nowhere good enough to convince anybody. I've got the feeling that the author aimed the article at people who were already convinced and too blinded to see beyond the obvious lies he mentioned. Let me give you just a few examples:
They announced that everyone should evacuate. Everyone was expected to devise their own way out of the disaster area by private means, just like people do when disaster hits free-market Third World countries. The city of New Orleans has an evacuation plan, which assumes the utilization of the city's busses. Instead of following the plan, however, roughly 550 of them remained parked and later flodded. It is not true that everybody was expected to leave the area by their own means.
The free market played a role in other ways. Bush’s agenda is to cut government services to the bone and make people rely on the private sector for the things they might need. There is the federal budget, and the state budget. The federal budget is used for federal projects, financing federal institutions and pork barrel projects, while the state budgets should cover local project. At best, Louisiana representatives weren't too bright, at worst Louisiana spent the money for more useless projects. And anyway, why does the author wish that the Bush government was more involved in helping the needy, when he later professes his distrust of the government?
So he sliced $71.2 million from the budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers, a 44 percent reduction. Plans to fortify New Orleans levees and upgrade the system of pumping out water had to be shelved. Louisiana Civil Corps is receiving an annual funding of $1.9 billion, more than any other state (California is second, with half a billion less). The corps wasted $748 million on building a useless canal lock, another $194 million for deepening a port that has been steadily losing traffic and deepening obscure canals, only to name them after the Congressmen who secured the money (such as the infamous J. Bennett Johnston Waterway).
In their campaign to starve out the public sector, the Bushite reactionaries also allowed developers to drain vast areas of wetlands. Hmmm... I didn't know that President Bush was in power since 1930, when the wholesale draining of wetlands started. However, I'm quite aware of the fact that prior to Katrina, the Bush administration has asked Louisiana to devise a plan for restoring some portion of the wetlands, at a $2 billion budget.
As for the rescue operation, the free-marketeers like to say that relief to the more unfortunate among us should be left to private charity.Wal*Mart, Home Depot and others certainly did a better job than FEMA. Maybe the author wanted more people to suffer, hoping for even lower ratings for President Bush. I hope that the author isn't one of those who would vaste hundreds of lives to further his political agenda...
Who was in charge of the rescue operation? Why so few helicopters and just a scattering of Coast Guard rescuers? Why did it take helicopters five hours to lift six people out of one hospital? When would the rescue operation gather some steam? Where were the feds? The state troopers? The National Guard? Where were the buses and trucks? the shelters and portable toilets? The medical supplies and water? Ultimatelly, the governor of Louisiana. Because of new TSA rules. Ditto. Already did. Waiting for the governor to actually allow them into the state. Waiting for orders from the governor. Ditto. Flooded in New Orleans. Not in New Orleand, that's for certain; the emergency plans actually advised against using the Superdome as a shelter. At the shelters where the evacuees were supposed to go. The questions the author raised, as well as my answers, actually support the notion that free markets could do the job better. Because of conflicting authorities and governmental efficiencies, the rescue operation was botched, yet the author for some strange reason seems to want more of that.
I've never before heard of the Web site where the article was posted, neither about the author. As such, I will not pass a judgment on either. However, based on this single article, the author seems to be either confused, or having malicious intentions, which involve hundreds more dead, in order to advance is political agenda. That disgusts me. But what insults me is the fact that the author didn't bother to come up with arguments that would have at least a grain of truth in them, and instead tried to feed me childish lies. Shame on him. |
| © Jozef Purdes, 2003 |