Words aren’t enough
There aren't any words to describe the emotions flooding my body. Rage and despair are twisting and twirling throughout, and all I want to do is scream. And I'm not from New Orleans; I've never even been to New Orleans.
I'm just your average American who cannot believe – even 8 months later – that this is what America has become: a country receiving foreign aid after a botched disaster response that killed many and left many homeless and jobless.
Two things:
FEMA – the Futile Emergency Management Agency – is closing its New Orleans office.
From Associated Press:
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is closing its long-term recovery office in New Orleans, claiming local officials failed to meet their planning obligations after Hurricane Katrina.
The office is responsible for helping the city devise a blueprint to rebuild destroyed houses, schools and neighborhoods.
[snip]
City officials were angered by the move, saying New Orleans is again being abandoned by the federal government. Deputy Mayor Greg Meffert said the FEMA office and the city worked in tandem initially but had a falling out over funding earlier this spring.
“We have a city that has an enormous planning need, and you need planners. To date, we haven’t gotten any monetary support to bring in planners,” Meffert said.
Meanwhile, Qatar – which pledged $100 million to the recovery effort, has announced its distribution of $60 million dollars of that.
Also from the Associated Press:
The oil-rich Persian Gulf nation Qatar has decided on the distribution of about $60 million of a $100 million gift announced last September for victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
The beneficiaries include $22 million for Habitat for Humanity to build 293 homes in the three states; $12.5 million to expand the facilities of Xavier University’s college of pharmacy; $10 million for scholarships at Tulane University for students who are Katrina victims; $5 million for scholarships for Katrina victims at Xavier University; and $3.3 million for a student relief fund at Louisiana State University.
Also, according to Mike Holtzman, a spokesman for the Qatar embassy, $5 million will be used to establish a Qatar Cares fund at Chidren’s hospital in New Orleans; another $351,651 for repair and renovation of clinics at the hospital; and $3 million for the March of Dimes to purchase and equip vans.
[snip]
“It is our duty to help people who were hurt,” said Nasser Bin Hamad al-Khalifa, Qatar’s ambassador to the United States. “Today’s globalization is making this one world and if any tragedy takes place we are all aware of it.”
[snip]
Also, Saudi Arabia, which pledged $100 million, intends to contribute its donations directly to the area without going through the U.S. government, said a U.S. official who could not be identified because she was not assigned to make such announcements. [emphasis mine]
Among the major donations received were nearly $100 million from the United Arab Emirates; $5 million from Bahrain, $5 million from China; $3.8 million from South Korea; $2 million from Taiwan; $1 million from Brunei; and $1 million from Nigeria.
How much has our government pledged? And, how much of that has actually been received and put to work helping residents of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana?! Meanwhile, FEMA is leaving?!
Oh. my. dear. freaking. god! It's not that foreign governments are giving us money, because heaven knows it's needed. It's that we need it because our own government is broke and incompetent.
10 Comments »
Leave a comment
-
You Have Spoken
-
Commenting Notice: Because spammers are getting faster in finding workarounds to my spam filter, I'm now moderating all comments containing links.
If your comment doesn't show up right away, it's caught in the filter and will be released at some point - usually within 24 hours.
-
“I don’t have an agenda, I don’t have a program. I’m not a communist or a socialist. I guess I’m a left-libertarian and a populist, and I believe in the Bill of Rights the way some folks believe in the Bible.”
– Molly Ivins, 1944-2007
Stats
Americans are finally being weaned off of nearly 75 years of “New Deal” think.
Before FDR numerous cities suffered disasters and recovered by pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps – Chicago leveled by fires, San Francisco flattened by an earthquake, Galveston by a hurricane. None benefited from Federal intervention. All came back and flourished.
In this age of New Deal big government Republicans and fat cat Democrats, breaking old social contracts with the American people is nothing new. And the negotiation of new social contracts with illegal aliens, the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan, the corporate warlords of the People’s Republic of China, and the sea trading pirates of Dubai is nothing new either.
You make it sound as if Chicago, et al simply picked themselves up, when in fact aid societies were put in charge of handling the distribution of funds to those in need, whether it was help rebuilding homes and businesses, purchasing food for meals, providing tents to those left homeless, etc. Donations poured in to these aid groups from all over the nation and the world. Much later, it was thought the government could do a better job. (*snicker*)
The biggest problem I see is no government agency doing anything except getting in the way. Federal, state, and local. What's getting done in NOLA is happening on a person-to-person. block-to-block level. Priorities that should have been set, planned, and dealt with from the very beginning, weren't. Like trash removal. The trash needs to be removed, so start picking it up and getting rid of it.
Sounds simple, right? Except that, it's not. Who's going to pay the trash haulers? Who's going to pay for the fuel and maintenance on those garbage trucks? Who's going to pay the landfill fees? The city? The city ran out of money a long time ago. The feds? They can't even release a flood map on time. The property owners? To many don't even have jobs, and they're fighting with the insurance companies.
Chicago and San Fran had the benefit of zero environmental regulations, so they just dumped the stuff wherever. (A lot of San Fran's debris went into the Bay, if I recall correctly.)
Another of the 'benefits' Chicago and San Francisco saw was that virtually everything was destroyed. There was nothing to do but build from the ground up. New Orleans was damaged, and some homes destroyed, but a great many of the buildings are still there. So they have to be gutted and remodeled or torn down and rebuilt. Who's going to pay for the contractors to do that? (And of course, there's the demolition permits, the building permits, etc.)
A great article to read on this is the Feb. 2000 "Lessons from the Chicago Fire, which you can find here.
One of the most important points it makes is that after the Chicago fire, jobs were created for the jobless by having them clean up the city. The Chicago Relief and Aid Society, through its Employment Bureau, paid for the cleanup. Once a "man, boy, or woman" was on the rolls as a worker, they could only receive money from the Society for whatever items they were unable to purchase with their wages. No one received money who had either the ability to pay for their needs, family who could provide for them, or owned property on which they could. The Society's Special Relief Committee helped tradespeople with start-up costs, including the first month's rent.
My point – finally! you're thinking – is that, the way the bureaucracy is set up these days, the able-bodied who would willingly do the work are being ignored in favor of the high-priced contractors, like Halliburton. So – we're paying some guy $50/hr to come from, say Maine, to do the work a man from New Orleans could do for 12.50/hr.
I do agree with you that those who can work should work. The problem is the system is rigged against those in New Orleans who need work. A similar point can be made about contractors and the military in Iraq. Until very recently, a lot of the work being done by contractors (Halliburton, again) was done by military personnel at a far lower cost. Nowadays, Beetle Bailey is the only guy in the Army who's on KP, and we're paying big money for civilians to do the same work.
I read awhile back that the U.S. government “lost” some millions of the foreign contributions. My guess is they “lost” it in Iraq.
Lady,
Tis a shame that the US because of GW’s actions is owned by foreign entities and cannot een admit it is a very precarious and deadly position. We need impeachment today as much as we needed it in 2003!
Lady,
Tis a shame that the US, because of GW’s actions, is owned by foreign entities and cannot even admit that we are in a very precarious and deadly position.
We need impeachment today as much and more than we needed it in 2003!
QG: Most likely – or else they went straight to Trent Lott to rebuild that house of his.
TPM: Amen and amen!
“You make it sound as if Chicago, et al simply picked themselves up…” Guess you missed the gist of my argument.
Try being a little more intelligent and a little less argumentative.
Guess you missed the gist of my argument.
Dog knows that’s the truth – when I read it I’d been awake nearly 22 hours, and I honestly thought you were saying something completely different. Re-reading my own response, I don’t know that it makes one lick of sense…as a response to your comment.
Try being a little more intelligent and a little less argumentative.
The difference between you and me, Josh, is that I can become more intelligent and less argumentative, while you will always be an asshole.Er….Right back atcha, dearie.
The money is nice and all, but um, are we going to use it to benefit anyone this time? I seriously think that the Average Joe American with some type of leadership skills could go down, utilize the money and get NOLA and other areas STILL not rebuilt up and at least running at a decent level inside of a year. It is so easy to criticize, and the criticisms are necessary and valid, but it isn’t changing anything.
True – the money’s worthless if it isn’t spent, and spent on getting basic services going, along with home-repairs. And without some decent leadership (at all levels) the money just ends up being wasted.
Priorities need to be set, and one of the things Josh pointed out above is that until fairly recently, disaster recovery was done at a community level. In NOLA and elsewhere, there are people on the ground who can be utilized to get things done. Instead of shoveling money at WH buddies at inflated prices, the same work could be done by residents, which would give them money for their own homes/necessities, and in turn, create that upward spiral that would rebuild the economy at a local level.