January 31, 2008
By: Sid Riley
This column presents a non-partisan, conservative viewpoint about items of interest in our community and our lives. Focus is on items impacting your pocket book, your personal freedoms, and your rights. I hope you will read the column regularly and it occasionally influences your opinions and actions. Now, on to the subject of the week:
Katrina will undoubtedly be the costliest hurricane the U.S. will ever experience….but not because of the damages from winds and flooding.
The real cost of Katrina will be the social impact created by the fiasco which occurred in New Orleans. The net result of the unfortunate experience will be another giant step for the U. S. as it moves towards socialism.
Prior to Katrina the responsibility of government, in times of national disasters, was to provide early warnings to the public, to create orderly evacuations as people were moved out of harms way and into safe havens, and after the event had transpired to provide easy and inexpensive funding of loans to help people rebuild and restore their lives.
With Katrina, that concept dramatically changed.
It doesn’t matter that the City Government in New Orleans allowed tens of thousands of people to remain in the eye of the storm, it doesn’t matter that the Mayor allowed hundreds of buses that could have been used for emergency evacuations to sit unused to eventually be covered by flood water, it doesn’t matter that the city had ignored for years the repeated warnings stating the protective dikes and flood walls were inadequate for a city with a major portion of the land below sea level, it doesn’t matter that the Mayor ignored offers from the rail companies to provide rail evacuation, it doesn’t matter that the conflicting ego’s of the bureaucracies allowed the Governor to prohibit the officials from FEMA from reacting for almost twenty four hours……all of this bureaucratic incompetence doesn’t matter (as attested by the subsequent reelection of the Mayor).
Instead, the storm became a social- political issue. And as usual, our politicians responded to the pressure by shoveling tons of public money into the pit Katrina dug. By the example they have established in the Katrina disaster, the Federal Government (Big, Big Brother) is now responsible for all future storms including taking all of those people who are impacted and providing housing, food, and income for years and years after the event. If they wish, they become eligible to become permanent social "wards" of the state.
The individuals themselves have no personal responsibility in the matter. The blame for the storm and the cost of total correction now lies with Big Brother Government. And thus, another giant step for Socialism has been made, along with a giant leap for the potential demise of our nation. And this has all occurred because the politicians feared losing some votes.
From Katrina forward, each President will be judged on how much and how quickly federal money can be dished out to the poor victims for all future national disasters. We might all hope another storm comes along and hits our homes, so we can quit working, quit paying bills, and can become eligible to get free housing, food and a big juicy check from our protective government every month. It is like suddenly becoming eligible for disability. Katrina will continue to cost our nation billions as bad events occur in the coming decades. Unquestionably, Katrina is the most expensive hurricane we will ever experience.
RUDAMENTS: Odds and Ends Worthy of Mention –
♦ Bogus Information: We are constantly being presented government produced data about unemployment and new jobs creation. These are designed to sooth any concerns we may have about the good job our various governments are doing on our behalf. For instance they tout that the Jackson County unemployment rate is very low, around 4.7%. The problem is they do not really include the total unemployed people in those computations.
For example, I personally know several former employees of Russell that were laid off, drew their unemployment until it ran out, and then stayed at home and hoped for another job to come along. They are still unemployed, but the statistics do not include them as part of the unemployed labor force. They fell through the system. This is true of the hundreds of textile and other factories that closed across our nation as we lost our industrial base.
The same is true for the new jobs created statistics. To really show the picture on new jobs, they need to show how many of those jobs are government created jobs as the various governments at all levels continue their exponential growth. How many are good, private sector jobs vs. how many are tax sucking government jobs? Also, the scale should demonstrate the quality of the job. How many good, high paying industrial jobs were lost and replaced by some low paying service job? They say numbers don’t lie….however they sure can misrepresent the truth.
♦ Folks, if we do not get the Commissioners to take action on the Wal-Mart building and make some binding offer (perhaps $2,000,000), the building will be sold and we will be faced with the cost of building an expensive structure in a bad location. Talk to your commissioner and have your friends and neighbors do the same. Do this and you will be "Getting It right"!
Katrina will undoubtedly be the costliest hurricane the U.S. will ever experience….but not because of the damages from winds and flooding.
The real cost of Katrina will be the social impact created by the fiasco which occurred in New Orleans. The net result of the unfortunate experience will be another giant step for the U. S. as it moves towards socialism.
Prior to Katrina the responsibility of government, in times of national disasters, was to provide early warnings to the public, to create orderly evacuations as people were moved out of harms way and into safe havens, and after the event had transpired to provide easy and inexpensive funding of loans to help people rebuild and restore their lives.
With Katrina, that concept dramatically changed.
It doesn’t matter that the City Government in New Orleans allowed tens of thousands of people to remain in the eye of the storm, it doesn’t matter that the Mayor allowed hundreds of buses that could have been used for emergency evacuations to sit unused to eventually be covered by flood water, it doesn’t matter that the city had ignored for years the repeated warnings stating the protective dikes and flood walls were inadequate for a city with a major portion of the land below sea level, it doesn’t matter that the Mayor ignored offers from the rail companies to provide rail evacuation, it doesn’t matter that the conflicting ego’s of the bureaucracies allowed the Governor to prohibit the officials from FEMA from reacting for almost twenty four hours……all of this bureaucratic incompetence doesn’t matter (as attested by the subsequent reelection of the Mayor).
Instead, the storm became a social- political issue. And as usual, our politicians responded to the pressure by shoveling tons of public money into the pit Katrina dug. By the example they have established in the Katrina disaster, the Federal Government (Big, Big Brother) is now responsible for all future storms including taking all of those people who are impacted and providing housing, food, and income for years and years after the event. If they wish, they become eligible to become permanent social "wards" of the state.
The individuals themselves have no personal responsibility in the matter. The blame for the storm and the cost of total correction now lies with Big Brother Government. And thus, another giant step for Socialism has been made, along with a giant leap for the potential demise of our nation. And this has all occurred because the politicians feared losing some votes.
From Katrina forward, each President will be judged on how much and how quickly federal money can be dished out to the poor victims for all future national disasters. We might all hope another storm comes along and hits our homes, so we can quit working, quit paying bills, and can become eligible to get free housing, food and a big juicy check from our protective government every month. It is like suddenly becoming eligible for disability. Katrina will continue to cost our nation billions as bad events occur in the coming decades. Unquestionably, Katrina is the most expensive hurricane we will ever experience.
RUDAMENTS: Odds and Ends Worthy of Mention –
♦ Bogus Information: We are constantly being presented government produced data about unemployment and new jobs creation. These are designed to sooth any concerns we may have about the good job our various governments are doing on our behalf. For instance they tout that the Jackson County unemployment rate is very low, around 4.7%. The problem is they do not really include the total unemployed people in those computations.
For example, I personally know several former employees of Russell that were laid off, drew their unemployment until it ran out, and then stayed at home and hoped for another job to come along. They are still unemployed, but the statistics do not include them as part of the unemployed labor force. They fell through the system. This is true of the hundreds of textile and other factories that closed across our nation as we lost our industrial base.
The same is true for the new jobs created statistics. To really show the picture on new jobs, they need to show how many of those jobs are government created jobs as the various governments at all levels continue their exponential growth. How many are good, private sector jobs vs. how many are tax sucking government jobs? Also, the scale should demonstrate the quality of the job. How many good, high paying industrial jobs were lost and replaced by some low paying service job? They say numbers don’t lie….however they sure can misrepresent the truth.
♦ Folks, if we do not get the Commissioners to take action on the Wal-Mart building and make some binding offer (perhaps $2,000,000), the building will be sold and we will be faced with the cost of building an expensive structure in a bad location. Talk to your commissioner and have your friends and neighbors do the same. Do this and you will be "Getting It right"!
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