So Mother Nature decided to pay us a real visit in the form of Hurricane Katrina. Katrina roared through Florida, then stalled in the Gulf of Mexico before turning on Mississippi, Alabama, and most notoriously the below sea level city of New Orleans. For the past week, the city of New Orleans was turned into a war zone when just 12 or so hours after Katrina hit, 2 levees which held back the waters of Lake Ponchatrain broke and waves of floods hit the city. Since that time, thousands of stories of looting, rapes, gunfire at people trying to make rescue attempts, and a general abandonment of the city by law enforcement were enough to make shake one's head.
Stories have been told of thousands of evacuees who gathered along the New Orleans Convention boulevard, watching and begging for help as police and guardsmen rolled on by. The head of New Orleans' Office of Emergency Prepardness was quoted as saying that food and supplies could not be located. Well, looters did a good job of locating them. It was horrible to hear stories of storm evacuees, sadly mostly blacks, who were again bullied about while they waited near the Superdome for help. New Orleans resident and Superdome evacuee Earle Young, aged 31, said they were treated like rats. The New Orleans municipal government located itself to Baton Rouge, while the levees broke and local law enforcement officers joined in on the looting of businesses and stores. Today, we hear claims by New Orleans deputy commander W.S. Riley that National Guard troops played cards while the disaster went on. Paul Krugman writes that:
"there were reports of Guard troops in The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., "reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics. Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!"
Today, we get the news that Louisiana Congressman Charlie Melancon saying that, "Americans must start asking tough questions" about their safety", and that "We must also be about the job of asking tough questions, my fellow Americans — questions about the health of our infrastructure and emergency response capabilities."
Meanwhile, scores and even hundreds of thousands of people have scattered across the country, leaving the disaster scene. Here in Houston, we are hosting tens of thousands at hotels and convention centers. Today, I wrote a check out for $300 to the Red Cross and gave 96 bottles of water to a nearby church which was hosting a charity drive. My company will match dollar for dollar what I have given in monetary donations and company volunteers await an assignment to be given to us by the United Way.
So what lessons do I derive out of all of this? Despite the yells that who do you look for to hold society together, who do you look to in order to curb crime and violence, and who do you look to for help (all of those answers being government), my conclusions are entirely different:
Go buy a gun because you can't rely on government to defend you when you are attacked, or when riots or natural disasters strike. You cannot rely on a government agency to get you to a safe place, or to treat you humanely even if they do tell you to get to a safe place. You cannot rely on government to give you good instructions on what to do in the event of a disaster. You would be better off to rely on yourself, your friends, family, and your neighbors for help. Riots and natural disasters like Katrina, the Watts and Rodney King Riots of 1965 and 1993 respectively show that the State - with all of its threats and coercive force - will walk away when under stress and only come back many days later to pick up the pieces after all the chaos, chest thumping, press conferences, finger pointing, and rising ethnic / racial animosity. If private actors or charity have braved the chaos to help others, they will be muscled out of the way. After all, they aren't needed anymore because the State is here!
I would have loved to have given away thousands more in charity, but sadly the United States Federal government will be taking about $6,000 - 7,000 away in taxes this year, meanwhile I will end up paying another $6,600 in Social Security taxes ($3,300 of which comes out of my pocket via my employer, and $3,300 withheld directly out of my check), my local property tax bill will be close to $3,000 this year, while I would guess that I will end up paying something like $2,000 in other various fees, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, and so forth. All told, my tax bills this year will come out to be somewhere around $17,000. I do get a bit of a break as I put a solid 15% of my paycheck away in a 401k plan, but that's the Feds' way of making me behave.
Meanwhile, Representative Carolyn Kilpatrick of Michigan went on record saying that, "I'm ashamed of America. I'm ashamed of our government. I'm outraged by the lack of response by our federal government." I'm sorry Ms. Kilpatrick, if I have ashamed you. But after all, you have direct control of 25% or more of my paycheck. What more do you want out of me? And that goes for Paul Krugman too, while I am at it. Krugman wrote in his September 2, 2005 New York Times column that "they (America's current leaders) never ask for shared sacrifice."
I'm tired of people bitching about not having sacrificed. What about that $17,000 per year? At the turn of the 20th century, all three levels of government were taking about 10 percent of national wealth. Even in 1940 it was still around that level, but now I pay at least one third. Krugman is saying that I'm not being asked to share sacrifices? I'm tired of hearing this God Damned bullshit! Meanwhile all of this does remind me to sign up as a volunteer the before the next disaster hits.
One of the big problems we have with a big centralized government is that it creates big moral hazards. I am a big believer that cities hold their own destinies in their own hands. But what we have had since the start of the 20th century is a situation where the American public, local, and state leaders have gotten into the habit of looking for the federal government to bail them out of all their problems. It bothers me a bit that I pay taxes to a Harris County Flood Control district which may or may not benefit me, but it bothers me enormously that the leadership and people of New Orleans look to ME, THE AMERICAN TAXPAYER, to pay for their levees and drainage control to keep New Orleans habitable! For those of you who believe in powerful central government, don't you forget, The United States Army Corps of Engineers is solely responsible for the levees of New Orleans as well as well as the entire Mississippi river. These acts show a stunning level of interference by the United States Government in local affairs. And this article reads that the Army Corps of Engineers has spent at least $430 million on the levees, while only $50 million was spent by locals before money dried up because of "Homeland Security", terrorism, and Afghanistan / Iraq. Do you really want to be at the mercy of who sits in the White House when it comes to local matters like pollution, fire, or flood control? And how many other cities and states are looking to ME to fund their various schemes? I have a strong feeling that this has a lot to do with why my federal income tax bills are so high. And what benefit exactly am I getting out of all this?
In general, a principle should hold that if a City or State needs to finance some critical project, then all possible forms of finance both public and private should be exhausted before local and state governments turn to the United States Government for finanace. Why do I get the feeling that this is not the way the world works anymore?
The word has it from the Editor and Publisher article above that the levee construction projects which were going to be needed to continue improvements and maintenance of the New Orleans levees was going to come out to $250 million. If the federal government - headed by Mr. Bush - was cutting back funding, which lead to the disaster, then why did the State of Louisiana and City of New Orleans not tell the Feds and Army Corps of Engineers that they were going to take matters into their own hands and float local bonds and taxes to make up the shortfall? A one time tax of $500 for each and every resident of New Orleans would have paid for the $250 million bill. After all, wouldn't the landowners, homeowners, and residents of the great City of New Orleans be the primary beneficiaries of such a project? And if the current President wouldn't have compensated them out of current federal coffers, then why not wait down the road for a (presumably) Democratic President who might have? But instead they chose to bitch and whine about their federal budget cuts, and now the left is making hay and patting itself on the back for saying that the soundings of ominous warnings were made, but an indifferent President didn't listen to them.
I sorely doubt that most residents of New Orleans voted for Mr. Bush or for Republicans in the last election. So why should they give the people of New Orleans federal money? One of my strongest beliefs about what has happened in Congress since the Republicans have taken control is that the federal government has not shrunk. Rather, monies that used to go to Democrat districts when Democrats controlled Congress from 1954 - 1994 now go to Republican districts instead. Oops, sorry belivers in Washington...
By the way, here is a webpage which details the United States Code which empowers the Corps of Engineers with control of the Mississippi River. Here is the Army Corps webpage itself on the matter. Hmmm...It says that the Mississippi River Commission which empowers the Feds with control over the river was created in 1879. This is starting to sound like a post Civil War / War between the States thing. Either:
1) the Feds didn't want those evil slave owning Southern Bastards getting another chokehold on the Mississippi in the event of another war with Washington, or...
2) the interested States simply didn't have any money to channel and maintain the river after the War between the States. That was because Sherman, Grant, and Co. had wiped out the South during the process of marching the Confederates back into the Union at gunpoint. Probably a combination of both.
I knew a guy from when I was in my late teens and early 20's whose family was from Metarie, a suburb in the western edge of New Orleans. I went to the N.O. Mardi Gras in 1993 and 1994. One morning, we went down to the banks of the Mississippi River and I beheld the river in the morning. The river was at least a good 300 yards (270 meters) wide at where we were at. That day, My friend Chris told me at that time that the city was basically under sea level. I will never forget hearing those words, as this very disquieting feeling overcame me. Another of my friends had talked about moving to N.O., but after hearing those words, I knew I would never consider moving to such a place. I have lived in Houston most of my life, outside of my time in China and when I worked at the nuclear power plant. Hurricanes and storms are a part of life for Americans who live in Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas. I had an awful feeling that N.O would get hit either by the river or by a hurricane, and when it did I would not want to be there. I had made a rational calculation that I would not want to live in such a place, but thanks to government 500,000 people enjoyed a sleepy but uneasy existence in The Big Easy. Their calculations, warped by government spending and interference, just came up wrong.
More on this tomorrow.
Ciao for now.
Posted by The Mighty Wizard at September 4, 2005 01:02 AM