Criminal negligence
Excuse me while I digress into a rant about this hurricane Katrina nonsense.
I am most definitely not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but I think I have a reasonably understanding of something called “criminal negligence”. I think this basically means when your inaction was so negligent, that it is conceptually the same as actively doing something wrong.
In keeping with my desire to avoid listening to all the bullshit spewing out from people’s mouths, I will only comment on actions.
One, the mayor was not prepared for this tragedy, despite the fact that he lives in a city which is lower than sea level. One has to wonder why he thinks it’s fine to issue orders to evacuate in a city with 30% of the people at the poverty level (i.e., if you are poor, evacuate to where, exactly?), and then not to utilize every single bus in the city’s bussing system to move people out?
Two, the Louisiana state government apparently wasn’t following protocol. The mayor has pointed out that protocol should be dropped in the event of an emergency, and I completely agree with him, but regardless, in this situation it apparently wasn’t. So, why wasn’t the state government making the formal requests it needed to make? How long does it take to draft a letter, anyway, when people are dying?
Three, FEMA is a fucking joke. It’s really just a front organization, anyway, for government control of the populace when the shit hits the fan, but I’ll avoid that topic for now. As far as I can see, all FEMA did was actively refuse help. For instance, Wal-Mart sent down tankers of water. They were told to go home. I’ve heard secondhand accounts of locally organized efforts, liike sending school buses to the affected areas to help with evacuation, also turned away. When the towers fell in New York on 9/11, firefighters came from all over the country to help, and FEMA let them in, despite the fact that it was a supposed terror risk, and ostensibly the government didn’t know if more was on the way, yet in New Orleans, where there was no discernable terror risk, they were turning away willing volunteers? If you’re going to “take control” of a situation, for god’s sake, don’t turn away free and willing help unless you actually have it under control.
Four, the federal government doesn’t give a shit about the average American. There are a billion pieces of evidence that make this clear, but the New Orleans tragedy only underscores it. Henry Kissinger, who is friends with the people in the current White House, famously coined the term “useless eaters” for the segment of the population that he felt didn’t contribute anything. By this he means poor people. And, his friends in the White House showed with their actions that they agree with this assessment.
Fifth, not that you need to be told this, but poor people, and especially poor black people, don’t matter to America. That’s the main message to be gleaned from the actions I witnessed last week.