Those Left Behind

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Well, the poll states it all.

As for me, I think it's despicable. I heard one National Guard who had just made it to New Orleans mutter just loudly enough for the cameras to catch it "At last, we're allowed to help."

I have also just heard that countries throughout Europe have offered troops and additional aid to America (since we maybe don't have enough with Homeland Security and our oil-fighing in Iraq).

I'm not sure that race and class were a factor in the rescue and recovery. The disaster recovery planning was so FUBAR, that I doubt they could have done any better of a job had such a disaster fallen upon Salt Lake City. The fact that the government did help the poor and disabled evacuate before the hurricane is definitely class discrimination. I wouln't call it racism though because poor whites were left behind and ignored too.

After all the survivirs are moved out, they might as well carpet bomb the place to make the rubble easier to remove. I really don't see a point in rebuilding there either.

The rich didn't need help as they were the first to leave, Unless some were idiots.

Its always the underpoverished that need help.

The upper/middle class ususally don't need help to get in their car and drive away.

here's an interesting little snippet of information from reuters:

http://today.reuters.com/News/CrisesArt ... =N02521178

so Bush knew what should have been done all along, eh?

how sad that i am not surprised.

There's no way in Hell that anybody could get the federal government to start an infastructure project in three years here!

Ture, even eminent Demand won't change anything.

I had heard on Dateline last night that those levees were originally built in the 1700s and only reinforced since then. The levees, as they were, could only bear up to a Category 3 hurricane.



New Orleans has been begging for YEARS for the funding from the government (and this hasn't just been over GW's reign but for YEARS) and I think most politicians considered if fatty spending and "extra".

There's even an article in Discovery magazine for this September which has an article about the heavy hurricane seasons coming up and this was written BEFORE Katrina was even named. It was eery reading that.

The gentleman interviewed in the article who has studied hurricanes for over 50 years and is in semi-retirement did say that these hurricanes are not due to global warming caused by fuel emissions. He had said something along the lines that global warming is just something the earth does and our fuel emissions add very little to it. But "fighting off" global warming has now become a money-maker. Due to his views, he no longer receives funding from many places to study hurricanes.

But emitting such things into the BREATHING air I think is more dangerous. All this polution. Makes my asthma flare up just thinking about it.

Yes, we do need to protect our environment. And yes, we need to prepare better, it lay in both the state and the fed's fault that the disaster did so much in casualties. The governor probably could only gather so many funds though, because the governor is not in full power, just like the mayor, and also Bush isn't solely to blame for lack of federal response, it lay in the Senate hands too, as they had the option to pass anything. The blame doesn't lie in any one set of hands, but in the hands of several hundred people.

Agreed, but carbon dioxide, the thing all global warming "researchers" are fighting against, is not a toxin except in very high concentrations. I do think we should do our best to reduce sulphorous emissions and nitrous oxides and those pollutants that actual pollute, but carbon dioxide is not a problem.

no, it isn't a toxin, except where you've stated. but it still contributes massively to global warming.

The problem is we don't even know for sure if global warming exists. Yes, recent satellite records show an upward slope of around 0.1c a decade, but we only have this data for the past 30 some years. Before this we have hand measured temperatures back to around 1850, these temperatures were mostly measured near urban centers which skew temperatures upward with population growth, and the margin of error with these old instruments and by-hand measurements is enourmous.

Very good point.

I might also note that in the wake of the Pacific Tsunami, we received information booklets about what to do if threatened by a Tsunami. According to the map, many areas of my city would be subject to flooding if a moderate Tsunami were to hit the Eastern Australian coast.

Among other things it stated that residents of lower lying areas would be instructed to evacuate if there were an imminent threat and assistance would be given plus the local council, the Army and SES would ensure that all people at risk were accounted for. Army vehicles would be deployed to transport people and supplies.

Now, had something like that been in force when cyclone Katrina was around, there would not have been nearly as many lives lost.

I'm not sure on this one.

Tim

First off if you look at the facts you'd see race and class had nothing to do with this. By law the cammander and chief of the military can not move troops anywhere in US soil (except bases) for any reason, unless the governor of that state voluntarily turns over control of the area to the federal government/cammander in chief, otherwise it is considered forceing martial law and thus an abuse of constitutional power. The National Guard from that state/locality might be able to get around this by tracing their origins back to the local militias. Other than that it is legally up to the governer to temporarily reliquish control over their territory if they can not deal with the specific issue alone, which the governor didn't do. FEMA was not on top of things but I doubt it was a race issue; they just weren't prepaired. The Hurrian didn't targit New Orleans or any of the affected areas over race, it just fallowed its corse. It was a level five hurrican, New Orleans lies below sea level on saturated ground and its levy system was built to withstand up to a level three hurrican, and was not properly maintained. It held for the initial hurricans but because it wasn't maintained, the original cleanup and drainage was not completed and it was probably damaged while still holding togeather, they had a lot of work, so it wasn't fixed immeadiently. Thus, all these factors lead to its failing in the following rains causeing much of the disaster.
To blame a natural disaster on race is ignorant.

Most of the levees in the US haven't been worked on in a while. Arnold Schwarzenaggar declared an emergency to have them worked on when he learned about it.

Nobody cares about it until it breaks... and in some instances they still don't care about it.