Katrina fall-out

Newps wrote:

You completely missed the point.

After watching a lot of the news footage over the last few days, I took his
words a bit more literally.

Our poor people aren't poor compared to the rest of the world.

This thread is not comparing our poor to the rest of the world. This
thread started when Jay questioned why so many people stayed behind.

--
Peter
























----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----

Peter R. wrote:

This thread is not comparing our poor to the rest of the world. This
thread started when Jay questioned why so many people stayed behind.

Well, lots of them stayed behind because they weren't allowed to leave. There's
a substantial prison population camping out with their guards on one of the
elevated highways. They're just now starting to evacuate the hospitals.

George Patterson
Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a person to
use the Internet and he won't bother you for weeks.

("Bob Fry" wrote)
[snip]
But as someone who lives in California--the Midwest's ATM machine--I know
all
about paying for other people's stupid decisions. It's damn ironic
for someone from the Midwest, the red-ink and red-state heartland, to
lecture us on where to live and sucking precious tax dollars.


Huh?
....and huh?
........and huh?


Montblack

Rich Lemert wrote:
Jay Honeck wrote:
I would have been in my plane/van/car/whatever, aimed north...
You are making several assumptions ...

did cut a lot of very good points

what worries me in this whole mess (I mean, in addition to
watching it all happen and feeling pretty darn powerless at
doing anything about it except for sending a token donation
to the Red Cross) is that: this thing didn't happen
as a surprise; unlike the tsunami victims, there was at
least a 48 hours warning; since 9/11, there has been a lot
of talk about disaster preparedness, and publicized exercises,
and gesticulations about home land security and all that
sort of things; yet, when the s* hits the fan, with advanced
notice (a courtesy that we shouldn't expect from the bad
guys -- or the next tsunami for that matter, a recent tsunami
alert in California was given *one hour* after the thing was
supposed to hit the coast), well, we end up with a massive
humanitarian disaster like any third world country which we
used to watch on tv feeling so much safer... this is quite
humbling indeed.

--Sylvain

On 2005-08-31, Jay Honeck wrote:
Why the hell were they there? Everyone in America knew that New Orleans --
and everything for 100 miles on each side -- was about to be blasted by
Katrina.

Not everyone had a means of getting out of New Orleans. Many of those
who stayed had their feet as their only form of transport. They had a
choice - stay and ride it out in the Superdome or their homes, or
perhaps walk and get no more than 20 miles and be guaranteed to be
*without shelter* when the storm hit.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

On 2005-09-01, Bob Fry wrote:
"JH" == Jay Honeck writes:
JH America is the only country in the world with fat poor people.

It's the only country with so many fat people, period.

Don't worry, apparently Britain is only 7 years behind the US for
obesity rates! So you're in good company...

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

On 2005-09-01, Jay Honeck wrote:
Bottom line: If I could sit here in Iowa, watching on TV as this big ol' bag
of Katrina whoop-ass bore inexorably down on the Gulf Coast, why couldn't
the people who actually LIVE THERE do the same thing?

I would have been in my plane/van/car/whatever, aimed north...

It would have to be 'whatever' because tens of thousands of New Orleans
residents DO NOT own cars and there aren't enough buses to go around.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

Rich Lemert wrote:
You are making several assumptions here that are not completely
justifiable. The first is that these people did not listen to the
warnings. There's a difference between wanting to get out of Dodge,
and being able to do so. This is also reflected in the assumption
indicated by your last statement - the assumption that these people
had a "plane/van/car/whatever" that they could take north. For a lot
of people in the city, the best they can afford is the public bus or
streetcar system.

That's a fault of the local government. Where are all the City of New
Orleans public transit buses?

And where are they going to go, even if they could go somewhere.
New Orleans is one of those places where you're a newcomer if your
family only goes back five generations, and where a relative is
"distant" because he lives on the other side of town. These people
don't have relatives they can stay with in other parts of the country
because their relatives are in the city with them - and have been for
many years. Staying in a motel is out of the question - when you're
living day-to-day you just can't afford the luxury.

Translation: they are on the federal, state and local dole. They have no
incentive to leave.

There's also an emotional aspect to leaving that you, accustomed
as you are to travelling routinely throughout the country, won't
understand. A lot of these people have never been more than 25-30 miles
from the home they were raised in. They may be in harm's way, but
it's a familiar place. Even a lot of the middle-class inhabitants of the
city can't understand how someone could move so far away (like maybe
150 miles) from everything they grew up with and all their friends and
family. After all, if you're that far away aren't you in a different
country?

Translation: they are ignorant and uneducated, incapable of logical
reasoning? Stay alive or feel good? Hmmm... what should I do?

"Montblack" wrote in message
...
("Bob Fry" wrote)
[snip]
But as someone who lives in California--the Midwest's ATM machine--I
know
all
about paying for other people's stupid decisions. It's damn ironic
for someone from the Midwest, the red-ink and red-state heartland, to
lecture us on where to live and sucking precious tax dollars.


Huh?
...and huh?
.......and huh?


Montblack

Don't worry it's just west coast mumbo jumbo.

Dylan Smith wrote:
It would have to be 'whatever' because tens of thousands of New Orleans
residents DO NOT own cars and there aren't enough buses to go around.

100 city buses each carrying 75 people 200 miles inland could relocate
65,000 people in three days, distributing them so as not to cause an
undue burden on any one geographic are and resources.