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A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State

H/T to a former Navy shipmate for this article e-mailed to me. He offered it without comment, and if you check it out, you'll see that it speaks for itself. (by the way, he's in the Houston area, a lot closer to the action than the Chief is up in South Dakota.)

If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists?myself included?did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over four days last week. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

As you may know if you've been reading this blog, I'm trying to help out a local law enforcement agency get some relief supplies to Mississippi. Click here for my post with all the details. Here is a local news...

This is from The Hill: White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove is planning to travel to North Dakota later this month to rally GOP activists and, Republicans hope, persuade Gov. John Hoeven (R) to challenge Sen. Kent Conrad...

An Ohio State linebacker said that the Buckeye goal was to make sure that Texas QB Vince Young didn't leave as a Heisman candidate. Whoops. Heisman candidacy status: Intact. At any rate, it certainly wasn't Young's best night. 2 INT's,...

From Rush Limbaugh: Congress is going to do all this investigating but they're not going to look at themselves. No spending could occur unless they vote on it, no priorities can be determined without Congress making them. All anybody else...

From Pat Buchanan: Katrina has exposed the limits of federal power and the absence of a serious set of national priorities. In New Orleans, those who relied on government ? the New Orleans police, the mayor, Gov. Blanco, FEMA ?...

Just now during the Notre Dame - Pitt game, ABC broke in to announce that Chief Justice Rhenquist has died....

Maybe this is something that the Louisiana voters can ask their delegation about: Army's engineers spent millions on Louisiana projects labeled as pork. Before Hurricane Katrina breached a levee on the New Orleans Industrial Canal, the Army Corps of Engineers...

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